Search
Close this search box.
Search
Close this search box.
Search
Close this search box.

Agile Marketing Validation Board

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
WhatsApp

Note: This post was originally published in Yuval Yeret’s personal blog

“Validated Learning Over Opinions and Conventions” is the first value in the Agile Marketing Manifesto. A couple of weeks ago I was helping form what we call a “Marketing Agile Release Train” – a group of Agile Marketing teams each focused on supporting the business activities of a key product/solution in a large portfolio. The way we do this is typically a combination of some Agile Marketing training followed up by actual high-level planning of their first quarter followed by a deep dive into their first iterations/sprints.

One of my personal peeves while teaching Agile Marketing is this whole validation/experimentation/learning thing. In other words the difference between increments and iterations. It’s not iterating if you’re not inspecting and possibly adapting along the way.

Let me emphasize – Just taking a big campaign and breaking it into small tasks and planning two weeks at a time while running demos to show what you’ve accomplished and daily standups to make sure progress is according to plan and solving emerging problems is just a glimpse of what Agile Marketing is really about.

This is why when we got to high-level planning I felt something was missing from how the teams were planning. They were working on an MVP BOM – A Minimally Viable Program Bill Of Materials describing the minimum aspects of the campaign/program they were focusing on. It was a good start to focus on smaller more minimal programs/campaigns and working incrementally, but I felt the iterative/learning message was missing from the discussion once we moved from theory to practice.

At that point, I recalled the “Lean Startup Validation Board”. I first learned about the Validation Board and practiced using it as a mentor in a “Lean Startup Machine” event back in Tel Aviv. It is a practical hands-on planning tool that focuses you on what you don’t know and need to learn.

In the classic Lean Startup context, it should help you in your search for a Product Market Fit. You start by identifying your hypothesis around who are your potential customers, what’s problem you think they have, and what solution might fit their needs. You then try to think what are your core assumptions that would need to be true in order for all your hypothesis to be true. You look for the riskiest assumption – the one you feel might be the first one to bring your house of cards down. Then you structure experiments/validated learning around that. If your experiment validates your assumption you move to the next assumption. If it invalidates it you need to pivot to another set of hypothesis and start the core assumptions validation process again.

Is this a good fit for an Agile Marketing context? While watching the teams plan their “MVP”s I was trying to think about that. My conclusion is that the core idea is very useful but needs a bit of tweaking.

The “Minimum” tweaking I would do is to change from “Solution Hypothesis” to “Marketing Solution Hypothesis”. When I say Marketing Solution I include things like channel or message. An example of a channel hypothesis might be – “we think that Snapchat can be a useful marketing channel for us”. A messaging hypothesis might be “During a snow storm people would really connect to messages regarding vacations in warm places”. 

Most of the teams we were working with this time around were focused on scaling/growing revenue which means that there’s already a Product Market Fit and they were trying to find new creative ways to leverage that fit by getting to more people in the identified market and optimizing the customer’s journey.

In general, I think we need to differentiate between the search for Product Market Fit which is mainly a Product Development activity (in which Marketing can be a supporting function in) and the search for the best way to streamline the customer’s journey – which is typically the role of Agile Marketing teams. These two activities might use similar tools and techniques but are quite differently focused. And in both cases, there’s the potential for a lot of uncertainty therefore stating your hypothesis and validating your core assumptions are key.

So if you’re serious about Agile Marketing, don’t just plan tasks. Plan experiments aimed at validating assumptions. Plan to learn. Plan to iterate.

Subscribe for Email Updates:

Categories:

Tags:

Enterprise DevOps
Scrum Master Role
User stories
Agile Release Management
Webinar
POPM
Acceptance Test-Driven Development
Video
Certified SAFe
Software Development Estimation
Agile Project Management
Entrepreneurial Operating System®
Games and Exercises
Development Value Streams
Nexus and Kanban
Story Slicing
Software Development
LPM
ATDD vs. BDD
Tips
SAFe DevOps
Continuous Improvement
Scrum Master
Lean Agile Management
Legacy Code
Achieve Business Agility
IT Operations
Tools
Agile India
PI Planning
Kanban
Amdocs
SAFe
Rapid RTC
Applying Agile Methodology
Sprint Iteration
Quality Assurance
Large Scale Scrum
Agility
AI
Continuous Delivery
QA
AI Artificial Intelligence
LeSS
Value Streams
The Agile Coach
Perfection Game
Lean Agile Leadership
Scrum and XP
Code
Manage Budget Creation
Agile Exercises
Built-In Quality
Professional Scrum Master
Continuous Integration
Kaizen
Lean and Agile Principles and Practices
Agile Techniques
speed @ scale
Elastic Leadership
Releases Using Lean
Hybrid Work
speed at scale
Agile Israel
TDD
Atlaassian
A Kanban System for Software Engineering
Systems Thinking
Presentation
Implementing SAFe
Scaled Agile Framework
Product Ownership
Lean Startup
Risk-aware Product Development
Agile Risk Management
Pomodoro Technique
Atlassian
Program Increment
Agile in the Enterprise
Planning
Effective Agile Retrospectives
Lean Agile Organization
Change Management
Continuous Deployment
Jira admin
Risk Management on Agile Projects
Agile Community
Test Driven Development
chatgpt
Kanban Basics
Agile Israel Events
AgileSparks
Process Improvement
Accelerate Value Delivery At Scale
Artificial Intelligence
Agile Basics
Engineering Practices
Agile Project
Managing Projects
Nexus
Professional Scrum with Kanban
Nexus vs SAFe
Agile Outsourcing
Kanban Game
Team Flow
Product Management
Lean Budgeting
Agile and DevOps Journey
Iterative Incremental Development
PI Objectives
Agile Games and Exercises
Daily Scrum
Lean-Agile Budgeting
Agile Assembly Architecture
Principles of Lean-Agile Leadership
WIP
Scrum Guide
agileisrael
Keith Sawyer
Covid19
Lean-Agile Software Development
Agile Product Development
DevOps
predictability
What Is Kanban
Agile Contracts Best Practices
ATDD
ALM Tools
Lean and Agile Techniques
System Archetypes
Self-organization
SAFe Release Planning
Scrum
Lean Agile
Lean Agile Basics
RTE
Jira Plans
System Integration Environments
Advanced Roadmaps
Business Agility
Risk Management in Kanban
Implementation of Lean and Agile
Agile Release Planning
The Kanban Method
Lean Risk Management
Kanban 101
Agile Mindset
Kaizen Workshop
Spotify
Sprint Planning
Sprint Retrospectives
Introduction to Test Driven Development
An Appreciative Retrospective
Coaching Agile Teams
BDD
transformation
Release Train Engineer
Slides
Legacy Enterprise
Agile
Nexus Integration Team
EOS®
Agile Games
Agile Development
SA
Reading List
Portfolio for Jira
NIT
Retrospectives
Scrum Values
Scrum With Kanban
Agile for Embedded Systems
ARTs
Managing Risk on Agile Projects
Professional Scrum Product Owner
lean agile change management
RSA
Nexus and SAFe
ART Success
Agile Program
ScrumMaster Tales
Agile Testing Practices
Agile Marketing
Certification
LAB
Continuous Planning
GanttBan
RTE Role
Jira Cloud
Agile Product Ownership
Kanban Kickstart Example
Operational Value Stream
Jira
ROI
Limiting Work in Progress
Frameworks
Lean Software Development
SPC
Agile Delivery
Scrum Primer
Scrum.org
System Team
AgileSparks
Logo
Enable registration in settings - general

Contact Us

Request for additional information and prices

AgileSparks Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter, and stay updated on the latest Agile news and events

This website uses Cookies to provide a better experience
Shopping cart