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Agile Marketing

Scaled Agile Marketing using SAFe – The Essentials

Focusing on SAFe™

In the previous article in the Scaled Agile Marketing series, I provided an overview of how Scaled Agile Marketing looks like. This time around I want to provide some more details on one of the approaches I mentioned for implementing Scaled Agile Marketing – the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe™).

Why SAFe? First of all, it is the most popular scaling approach these days and so many marketers will find themselves in organizations where SAFe is actually used in IT/Technology and the option of using it in Marketing as well will come up. As a result of that, it is also the scaling framework I’ve actually had a chance to use in a marketing context with good results.

Agile Marketing

Scaled Agile Marketing – An Overview

What does Scaled Agile Marketing mean?

So, assuming you’re thinking Agile Marketing can help you with some of your marketing challenges and there’s a good opportunity to do something about it right now, and there are some reasons you think you need to consider some scaling aspects, let’s try to see what scaled agile marketing looks like.

Agile Tools

Scrum Board Setup Tips and Tricks

I’d like to share with you some tips and tricks of setting a scrum board I usually share with my clients. The bottom line is that too many tools have too many features that support old ways of thinking. Let’s look at the various items one by one

Agile Tools

Seeing The Big Picture With Scrum

A common phenomenon happening in organizations implementing scrum is that something is missing – the big picture. People are saying “We used to have High-Level Designs – where are they?”, “We used to have an architecture before developing – where is it?”. The answer will usually be that as we are working with small batches we need to focus on what’s immediately coming up and so other things are getting neglected.

But this is a confusion. Nothing should be neglected. For sure we cannot neglect long-term thinking and planning.

Agile Marketing

Defining Agile Marketing

In this article we will try to define the approach known as “Agile Marketing” – The application of ideas from the world of “Lean/Agile Software Development” to the world of marketing with the aim of achieving marketing agility.

What ISN’T Agile Marketing

First, a couple of clarifications and myth-busting. Agile Marketing isn’t reactive marketing. Agile Marketing isn’t about how you react in a Marketing/PR crisis (ask United about those) or real-time opportunity (you can ask Oreo about those). I don’t mean that you can not/shouldn’t deal with those when you’re doing Agile Marketing, but it isn’t what Agile Marketing is about.

Agile Marketing

Better late than never

It took us some time, but the slides from our (Steve Wolfe from CA and myself) December talk in the Boston Agile Marketing meetup are finally publicly available.

Agile Marketing

What Is Agile Marketing

This ISN’T Agile Marketing

Agile Marketing also isn’t “We just get things done without any real process.” Being super-responsive and saying “yes we can” all the time isn’t Agile Marketing. (Especially if it means unsustainable pace).

Finally, Agile Marketing also isn’t Scrum, Daily Scrums/Standups, Sprints, Scrum Masters, Kanban Boards. It

Agile Marketing

Do you NEED to Scale Agile Marketing? (Scaled Agile Marketing Series – Part 3)

In earlier posts in our Scaled Agile Marketing, we looked at whether you even need Agile Marketing and then what typically triggers a serious discussion about Agile Marketing. In this post, we move to the next step – figuring out if you need Scaled Agile Marketing.

So – Do you need Scaled Agile Marketing?

Scaling isn’t just a function of the number of people in the marketing organization. It’s more a function of how many marketers need to work together as part of one customer journey/experience.

Let’s look at an example. In the diagram below you can see a typical marketing organization that would possibly have a need for some scaling approach. They have agile teams that cross-cut the different marketing functions – focusing on delivering marketing value/impact for a specific product/customer journey rather than focusing on a specific marketing function/task.

Agile Marketing

Reaching The Tipping Point For Agile Marketing

The Need For An Agile Marketing Transformation

Marketers or junior marketing leaders can implement Agile Marketing at the team level bottom up or in islands in the organization. This approach can achieve some improvement but typically stalls at some point.

Real marketing agility requires a transformative change in processes, policies, mindset, and maybe even the type of leaders. This is a bigger lift obviously.

While most of the marketing organizations we see score pretty high on the “do they need Agile Marketing?” scale, Only some of them would agree that that’s indeed what they need, and even a smaller set goes and does something about it.

While many marketing leaders agree with Agile Marketing at the concept level, They need a strong trigger before they take action on it. (To use “customer journey” language – most marketing leaders aren’t even in the awareness stage, but even those that are, need a trigger to move towards acquisition and activation…)

Agile Marketing

Why Agile Marketing?

Why Agile Marketing

Making any sort of change is non-trivial. Implementing Agile Marketing, especially at scale, is hard. There should be a real need for it. These are some common change drivers we hear from Marketing leaders (more at “State of Agile Marketing” by Andrea Fryrear):

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