What’s holding back the Agile marketing revolution?
There’s one big thing holding us back from an Agile marketing revolution: Scrum.
The marketing world is changing, as the principles of agility — the ones that changed how we build software — make their way onto the CMO’s radar. The need for flexibility, continuous improvement, and rapid decision making has never been stronger, but simply recognizing those needs isn’t going to satisfy them. Tension grows for marketers who know they need to become more agile, but struggle to “do it”. The tribe of marketers who feel this tension grows by the day. An Agile marketing revolution is on the horizon, but there’s one big thing holding it back: Scrum.
An Agile marketing revolution is on the horizon, but there’s one big thing holding it back: Scrum.
The De Facto Agile
In case you’ve never heard the term Scrum, here’s some background. Scrum is an Agile software development methodology that was created by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland in the 90's (I’m severely abridging the history). It prescribed an iterative software development process, with a few signature attributes:
- Deliver small increments of fully-tested, production ready software every 2-4 weeks (called “sprints” or “iterations”), instead of taking months or years to do it one big batch.
- Development teams meet daily for 15 minutes (this meeting is called a scrum, based on the rugby term) to connect for issue resolution.
- Work is grouped in user stories, representing chunks of business value, estimated by an abstraction of required effort called story points.
- Teams meet every sprint for a retrospective to regroup about the process, make adjustments, and plan for the next batch of work.
This methodology takes the lofty principles of the Agile Manifesto (notice the signatures), and transforms them into a tangible approach. Scrum has become the de facto methodology for implementing Agile in software development, because it is easy to digest, prescriptive enough to be applied, and it has driven a lot of success for organizations. But, Scrum’s success has created some misconceptions about what exactly is Agile.
Scrum is not Agile. I’m not saying that Scrum isn’t a version of Agile. I’m saying that, though it’s the most familiar version, it’s not the only version. Generally, when someone says “we do Agile”, what they technically mean is, “we use the Scrum approach to Agile.” Other Agile approaches to software development, like the Unified Process, Lean, or Extreme Programming (XP) often take a back seat, in terms of notoriety. They are similar in spirit — just simply a different way to approach the same idea.
Very few organizations apply one Agile methodology, by the book. What typically happens is that multiple methodologies, the organization’s culture, and political forces all influence the “version” of Agile they run. That said, Scrum concepts tend to be the most prevalent markers of an Agile process methodology.
The term “Agile” has mostly been used, thus far, to talk about a new way of building software (Scrum being a version of that). But, the underlying principles show up in other domains, too. Agile development is, in many ways, an application of Lean manufacturing principles to programming. Startup companies often employ Lean product development techniques, as well. (Some people call this “Agile marketing”.) In both examples, the term “Lean” is used, instead of “Agile”, but they are really two sides of the same coin. It’s all in the spirit of creating adaptive organizations that are able to tolerate change.
Marketing, Meet Agile
One of the primary forces to start being agile, placed on marketers, comes from the software development world. There’s a melting pot of cultures occurring: the Mad Men creative brand culture meets the modern information technology culture. Digitizing the customer experience requires software. Software requires software developers. And, far and away, most software developers who have drunk the Agile Kool-Aid are comfortable with some version of Scrum.
These developers see marketing teams struggling with many of the same types of problems that inspired the Agile development movement: lack of access to inevitably changing information, the need to be more flexible, etc. A developer chimes up at the conference table, “Hey! We use Scrum to solve these problems in our world. Let’s try it here.” Thus, the marketing vocabulary is augmented with terms like, “sprint”, “story”, and “retrospective”.
The Best Fit for Marketing?
Marketers are opening up to Agile and Scrum. They recognize the need for operational improvement. They are experimenting with ways to create it. Let’s call that the first victory. But, I challenge that applying Scrum—even a heavily augmented version of it—is the most effective way to “do” Agile marketing.
Remember, Scrum was created to help software developers develop software. That domain is fundamentally different from marketing in a number of ways:
- Software development is functional and mathematical, where marketing (even digital marketing) is firstly a creative endeavor.
- Software development is about coercing a machine to do something, where marketing is about convincing a human to do something.
- Software development has tangible release dates, even if they happen very frequently, where marketing is ongoing, with no end.
- Software development has a consistent output (the software), where the output of marketing can be different every single time.
Here’s another way to look at it. Software development is a production activity. Marketing is an engagement activity. And, those play two very different, albeit connected, roles in helping an organization achieve success.
You can look at this at a more practical level to see where the Scrum process creates some tension in marketing. How do you manage ongoing campaigns across two week sprints? How do you estimate story points (the effort) for creative production? What if I need to do something, right now, and I cannot wait for the next sprint? How do you create small, cross-functional Scrum teams, when the marketing department is mostly made of of specialists? I could go on…
My point is that Scrum does not really jive with the realities of modern marketing. Thus, teams build in exceptions to the new Scrum way of doing things. They adapt the process to make it fit their needs. When it can’t be adapted enough, they circumvent the process to get their jobs done.
The freedom and willingness to learn and adapt is philosophically Agile (“Responding to change over following a plan.”). But, if you must transform or work around Scrum to make it work for marketing, why not approach the problem differently? What if the answer isn’t to reapply and reorient Scrum? I believe that the answer lies in a completely new way to “do” Agile, specifically built according to the realities of marketing? A future that contains widespread adoption of a common Agile marketing philosophy will not include Scrum.
A future that contains widespread adoption of a common Agile marketing philosophy will not include Scrum.
A New Kind of Agile
Many proponents of Agile marketing have attempted Agile marketing manifestos, in the same spirit of the Agile Manifesto created for programming. A 2012 summit, SprintZero, held in San Francisco, attempted to do the same. While these are all steps in the right direction, the way to do Agile marketing is still quite fragmented. Some of these manifestos have very similar (perhaps borrowed) values. Some of them are quite divergent. Until these values can be applied in a practical and consistent way, they will remain pie in the sky.
Or, maybe the manifesto isn’t the place to start.
Perhaps a manifesto will help. Perhaps it won’t. What concerns me about the idea of starting with a manifesto is that it feels like an attempt to (once again) replicate the success of Agile software development. Agile software development methodologies, like Scrum, are applications of The Agile Manifesto. That doesn’t mean Agile marketing has to follow the same path. Agile marketing will not be the revolution it has the potential to be if we simply try to relive the Agile software development movement.
Agile marketing will not be the revolution it has the potential to be if we simply try to relive the Agile software development movement.
What we need is a new version of Agile that is specifically for marketing. It must accommodate for the fact that marketing is more inconsistent, more complex, and less tangible than software development. It must be compatible with software development processes, like Scrum, because marketing and software become more intertwined every day. And, it must be flexible and digestible enough to receive the same kind of widespread adoption that Scrum has attained.
Here’s what I think we need to be thinking about…
We need a tangible, comprehendible methodology for applying these ideas. Scrum is the widely understood, de facto methodology for doing Agile software development. As of now, there is no such equivalent in the marketing world. Like Scrum, it should be prescriptive enough to be applicable, but flexible enough to be adaptive across industries, cultures, and situations. This is a big ask, and it’s something that very smart people are likely working on. It is critical to the success of the Agile marketing movement.
This methodology should not be a new iteration of Scrum, but it must absolutely be integrated with Scrum. Every day, marketing becomes more software-driven. Therefore the processes for marketing the organization must interact seamlessly with the processes for developing software. I’ve made a point to differentiate marketing and software development. Despite their fundamental conceptual differences, they are forever linked. We must never forget that.
The quantifiable output for Scrum is the story point, a representation of how much software you built. Your velocity, your average story points per spring, is how fast you deliver working software. Marketing is more complex than “how much work you got done”, so we must redefine what “getting it done” means. The quantifiable output for this new way of marketing needs to embody some concept of knowledge or engagement (or both?). We’re trying to find ways to to quickly adapt to our customer’s needs to deliver relevant brand experiences. Learning about your customer is what enables you to create experiences that engage. Knowledge attained and engagement are difficult to measure, though. Hence, a challenging crux.
Last, we may need a new name for “Agile marketing”. The term “Agile” is too linked to software (and Scrum) and the term “Lean” is too linked to manufacturing operations. For better or worse, humans associate existing words with familiar concepts. Agile marketing is, in most ways, uncharted territory. The vocabulary we use needs to encourage new ideas; not reuse of existing ones. If we can’t get around assuming that Agile means Scrum, then we need to call “Agile marketing” something else.
A marketing revolution is on the horizon. There’s a huge opportunity to create innovative ways to reorient how we market our organizations to customers. We’ve taken the first step, experimenting with using Scrum concepts in marketing. Now, it’s time to step outside the box and look at new ways to apply similar philosophies. Scrum is not the future of Agile marketing. It’s time to build whatever is.
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