Marketing the Agile Way | Discussion Guide

Key Benefits of Scrum/Agile in Marketing

Scrum is an iterative, incremental methodology for project management often seen in agile software development. Scrum can be used to as a general project/program management approach and has distinct benefits when applied to Marketing activities.

Agile Glossary, Abridged • Product Owner (PO): Responsible for maintaining the Backlog by representing the

interests of the stakeholders.

• Team Backlog: A prioritized list of high level requirements.

• Sprint: A time period (typically 2–4 weeks) in which work occurs on a set of backlog items that the Team has committed.

• Sprint Backlog: prioritized list of tasks to be completed in a sprint.

• Epic: A large effort split up into multiple related user stories.

• User Story: Detailed description of a task from stakeholders POV.

• Planning Poker: The team estimates effort for the stories in the backlog. The PO uses estimates to prioritize & forecast stories based on velocity.

• Point Scale: Point system, used to describe task difficulty, without assigning actual hours. HubSpot uses the Fibonacci sequence (1,2,3,5,8…).

• Success Criteria: The exit-criteria to determine if a task is complete.

Transparency

Prioritization

Predictability

Workshop It!

• Pick a project or team

• Define a user story & success criteria

• Epic? Break it down into executable tasks

• Discuss how you’d evaluate points

• What cultural barriers might you encounter?

• Could this increase transparency?

• Could this help you prioritize?

• Could this improve predictability?

Additional Resources • Def/Glossary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development)

• Session Content: http://www.slideshare.net/kirstenpetra/marketing-the-agile-way-applying-scrum-outside-of-develoment

Prio User Story Success Criteria

Owner Points

& Status

Content Courtesy of Kirsten Knipp Director of Product Marketing, @kirstenpetra