It’s not only Tech teams that can learn from and use Agile
At ASOS, the Content Platform Team (in Tech) work closely with the Brand Experience (BX) Team — for example building on-site pages and features for campaigns like Fashion Discovery (a competition seeking new design talent).
When BX run these campaigns, there can be a huge number of people involved and not just from Tech. Think Product, UX, UI, CRM, SEO, Creative, Social, and more.
Across these teams, it’s not surprising that the ways of working vary widely and one of the greatest contrasts in this regard was between BX and Tech. Whilst BX had adopted Waterfall methodologies to run their campaigns, our tech teams almost exclusively use Agile.
The challenges and queries BX experienced around our Agile approach were a perfect representation of what many stakeholders face in understanding how teams work using Agile and Scrum — notably things like:
· What are the advantages and disadvantages of Waterfall vs. Agile methodologies?
· How does Scrum work?
· What is an MVP and how is work prioritised?
· Why are we unable to confirm up front that we can meet all requirements for a specific deadline?
· How and why does Agile encourage regular feedback from stakeholders?
Introducing BX to Agile and Scrum
In order to help the BX project managers better understand how we were working, I attended one of their monthly meetings and gave a guest presentation covering:
· Agile vs. Waterfall
· Scrum
· The Business Analyst/Product Owner and Agile Delivery Manager (ADM) roles at ASOS
· A case study of how a particular campaign had been run and how it might have worked better if we’d adopted some of the Agile principles and practices our Tech teams use (e.g. prototypes and user testing)
· How Agile can be used to help manage non-Tech projects
As the presentation progressed, I was excited to learn that this last point really resonated with the project managers. I received several comments reinforcing common pain-points to managing projects in a Waterfall manner, as well as their enthusiasm to understand more around how Agile can help them in BX.
Learning with Lego
Following this, the Head of Creative Project Management reached out to learn more and the BX-specific Lego4Scrum sessions were born! Doug Idle (ADM) had already been running a load of these simulations for people across the business and so was excited to be involved.
You can read more here about the sessions we ran together.
Putting their knowledge of Agile into practice
Doug and I have been blown away by the enthusiasm across all levels within BX and their desire to try out their newfound knowledge of Agile in practice. They have already made significant steps on their journey by:
· Using Agile principles and practices across Discovery (or, what BX call ‘Concepting’) — to encourage collaborative, fast and iterative idea generation and validation
· Estimating chunks of work — to try to be more realistic in planning and prioritising work
· Better assigning of people to work together in sprints — to drive continuous delivery of tasks and avoid bottlenecks by forming dedicated teams working together in time-boxed one-week sprints
· Holding weekly review sessions with the Head of Creative and relevant Directors — to embrace change and not be afraid to show a working idea/ unfinished product in order to get additional and more regular feedback
· Having stand-ups with the core project team twice a week — to ensure alignment on feedback and next steps, as well as to share updates and raise any blockers to progress
All of this has already resulted in furthering collaboration and cohesion in BX’s working culture. Team members are more comfortable being able to present their working ideas within a more informal setting and having time to build upon the feedback received.
Doug and I continue to be involved with running more Lego4Scrum sessions for BX project teams and beyond, catching up with the BX team on their progress, as well as providing them with Agile coaching and consulting as they need (for example, around prioritisation and managing an MVP). We’ll be back with more updates in due course as to how they’re getting on!
In the meantime, we’re making a plug for other areas of the business to learn more about Agile. Whether it be trying to make use of a methodology like Scrum or Kanban, or just trying to adopt some of the Agile principles, there is a world of benefit to teams outside of Tech, too.
This post was co-authored with my colleague Doug Idle.
Joanne Whalley is a Business Analyst/Product Owner in ASOS Tech. Outside of work she enjoys spending most of her time and money on restaurants, bars, music events and holidays!
