Scrum in Communications Team

The startup environment is well known for its rapid adoption of new solutions, ideas, and tools. We implement a lot of them each week, looking for ways to improve our workflow, better measure effects or set up achievable goals: from social listening to these new meal-replacing soy drinks to marketing automation.

Many of these — maybe without the soy drinks — are later implemented in a (kind of) second wave by other industries and businesses, including less flexible PR firms operating across many markets. One of such solutions is Scrum, built to improve management of the product development process. According to scrumguides.org, Scrum is “a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.” Thanks to its flexibility, Scrum can also be implemented by non-tech teams like sales or marketing.

That’s the reason why we’ve decided to try it out at Prowly as well.

Every two weeks, our sales & marketing teams sit together for a 1.5-hour meeting to go through all the tasks assigned to each team member two weeks earlier (the aim is to complete your tasks during a period called sprint which in our case lasts two weeks). There’s one crucial rule you need to obey for it to work — task accomplishment is binary, you either have done it completely or haven’t done at all. Zero or One, it’s that simple. Wrote the blog post you had in your tasks but didn’t distribute it yet? Sorry, your task is not delivered. Cold called 40 leads instead of planned 60? That’s a zero, too. It requires your team — the Scrum Master (leading the Scrum) and each team member — to set up goals and expected results reasonably and responsibly, as each non-delivered task impacts the overall performance of the team. Although it may sound a bit radical and non-rewarding, it’s definitely not. Scrum introduces a high teamwork discipline and task prioritization, but you’ll have to change your mindset to get the most out of it.

Some may say that in communications or sales you have to be ultra-flexible, as new tasks, sales opportunities, media requests or RTM possibilities appear unexpected, so how could you predict them while planning your next two weeks? You can’t, obviously. That’s why it’s good to divide your time assets between sprint and everything else, i.e. 60% to 40%. Let’s assume that your team works eight hours per day, five days a week, which gives forty hours a week per team member. During each sprint session (2 weeks), they have six workdays (forty-eight hours) to complete all the tasks planned for the ongoing sprint based on the set priorities. The rest of the time can be spent on everything else, and its only up to them how they set up their work. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Track your performance and analyze your time asset split — it may make sense to give your team some more hours for their sprint tasks (or just the opposite).

Here are some Scrum advantages that we see as key from the PR & marketing perspective:

• Transparent achievables written down to the lowest level of the expected final outcome: from the amount of coverage, the number of interviews, meetings, to page visits, social shares, newsletter sign-ups, etc.
• Live performance tracking with online software like Trello or Jira (under the condition that task statuses are updated regularly based on the results achieved)
• Regular reviews happening on short intervals allow to change tactics or re-prioritize current work whenever first signs of being less effective appear
• Clear task prioritization improves workflow and helps managers set real expectations that help drive business growth
• Regular sprint sessions require team members to share their experience: both successes and obstacles, encouraging whole teams to find solutions or workarounds
• Hard data obtained in each sprint allows regular team performance assessment based on actual numbers

Digital evolution requires communications, as well as sales (especially in a SaaS model), to be agile and adapt quickly. That’s why we’ve switched all our teams to Scrum. It doesn’t always mean we perform better in every field — but we know how we perform, which tactics should be changed right now, and which tasks require the biggest focus over the next period. And that’s the kind of knowledge that lets you be flexible. And effective.

Originally published at CrowdReviews.com.