My Journey to Becoming an Agile Marketing Scrum Master
Recently, I had the pleasure of receiving my Professional Scrum Master Assessment Certification with ‘’Scrum.org’’. I undertook this training via the learning platform ‘’SureSkills’’ and I must say that the guidance, time and effort provided by the team was second to none. When I signed up for this course, I felt I may be out of my depth slightly, as other members undertaking the course had much more project management experience than I, but I quickly learned that this was not an issue.
The team maintained a steady pace, the course was outlined excellently and each person undertaking this training was given the opportunity to ask as many questions as needed and were provided with an abundance of support materials & resources. I received tremendous insights into the world of scrum and agile methodology to equip me with the knowledge and skills to transfer to Version 1’s Marketing team.
Scrum Master Background
Scrum project management is a methodology for managing product/service delivery that comes under the broader umbrella of agile project management. It provides a lightweight and agile process framework that embraces iterative and incremental practices, helping organisations deliver outputs more frequently. Scrum has been build-out of three very simple ideas which are the empirical process, self-organized teams, and continuous improvement. These three ideas define the framework that for over the last 20 years has been used by thousands of teams to solve complex problems.
Scrum encourages a focus on learning via done work and continually allows any team to plan via transparency. Scrum’s roots are in software, but it is being used in many more domains of all varying natures, Marketing being one. I will now explain the may benefits of applying agile methods within any Marketing team of any industry.
Benefits of Using Scrum Within Marketing
Regular reviews increase stakeholders management & communication:
Daily/weekly ‘’Sprints’’ provide a regular opportunity for stakeholders to review what teams are doing and provide feedback. They also allow changes in conditions/circumstances to be quickly delivered to marketing to ensure that work is not wasted.
Varying priorities are dealt with in a clear and concise manner:
Marketing often suffers from priority overload with all aspects of the organisation wanting attention and effort, often at the same time. Strategic plans often get added to as sales teams or management discover immediate opportunities, which were not known at the planning stage. By having a ‘’Product Backlog’’ which clearly outlines one’s priorities, it allows a Marketing team to have more open & honest discussions with stakeholders. Ensuring that everyone understands that their ask is not alone and that decisions have to be made, ensures that there are fewer surprises.
Improved Marketing analytics changes the planning processes:
Today, Marketing has more modern tools to provide better insight into customer use of the materials. By having a regular Sprint cycle and encouraging feedback that leads to changes in planned work, Scrum provides a way to take that data and use it. Also, by surfacing some of this data at the ‘’Sprint Review & Retrospective’’ stakeholders get more visibility, which helps with their feedback.
Advancement in the speed of decision making:
Marketing has many customers and that can mean work is slowed down to gain input, review, and signoff. By empowering one person to drive the priority of the work and be accountable for the value delivered, Scrum reduces the mass input of multiple customers. Input is still given throughout the process and the Sprint Review provides a regular mechanism for review and feedback, but time is not wasted waiting for input from multiple stakeholders.
Conclusion
Marketing is suffering from complexity; complexity because of the customer, stakeholders, improved data, and the increased rhythm of the market. To overcome these complexities, I would encourage all Marketing teams to embrace Agile methods of working. Since transitioning the Version 1 Marketing team to follow a scrum approach, the results have been fantastic, the implementation of these agile methods have not only helped in delivering collateral to the market faster but also improved the overall morale of the team and has allowed for better alignment with our stakeholders.
About the Author
Victoria Roche is currently working as a Project Manager for Version 1’s Marketing team. Victoria is passionate about Project, Campaign & Event management in an Agile world.
