Many financial services brands are shifting their marketing organizations to agile to take advantage of the inherent benefits. The largest pros to agile are that it puts focus on the consumer, gets more results from less work, dramatically shortens the time to execute a campaign or test by emphasizing a quick launch of a minimal viable product (MVP) with subsequent, iterative improvements, allows for quick shifts in strategy or approach, and leads to data- and results-driven decision making. This agility enables organizations to innovate and take advantage of shifts in consumer demands, marketplace changes, and other opportunities.
Agile differs from other types of marketing transformation because it’s not a technology change; it’s a process and mindset change: Agile removes the hierarchy in an organization and instead empowers people to own their work and set tasks that will deliver the target objectives and key results. It provides focus, which eliminates lower-impact work, reduces the number of meetings, and takes away the stress of having to constantly balance conflicting priorities.
Agile also provides transparency for the squad into what each team member is working on every day and each sprint period, allowing team learning and sharing of ideas. This transparency is achieved through the use of visual tools, like Jira, and with daily “standup” meetings that are quick reviews of what everyone is working on that day. In addition to these, there is a critical feedback mechanism called the retrospective, where the entire squad shares what went well each sprint and what didn’t and how they will fix it. Not only does the retro drive continuous improvement, but also accountability to that improvement and creates team-based success.
But how do you make the shift from the traditional waterfall approach to agile when marketing may encompass hundreds of employees?
It’s not an easy transition and may not be fast, either. My organization was smart and leveraged existing agile leadership as well as outside consulting resources to manage the change. Several high-priority goals were identified, and squads were formed with experts in those areas. We all then went through a week’s worth of agile training and exercises and had squad meetings to discuss what we had learned and how to apply it.
By the end of the first week, we were starting to use new tools to manage our work and ideas. About a month later, my squad was getting the hang of things and running tests that resulted in learnings, both positive and negative, and contributing towards our goals. The most important factors to the roll-out’s success were:
• Executive leadership championing the shift to agile
• Investment in training and agile coaches
• Experienced Scrum Masters and Product Owners for each squad
• Quarterly organizational retrospectives to drive wide-spread continuous improvement
• A culture that accepts that change takes time and is uncomfortable and that not all tests will be successful, but they will all add knowledge
However, only a portion of Marketing transitioned during this phase. It will require more time and more waves of squads being formed over the next year or so before our entire marketing organization has shifted to agile. But it’s a start. Or you could say, our organizational MVP into agile marketing.
Prior to learning what agile was, I thought it was a bunch of people bypassing existing processes, breaking things, and bugging me for immediate answers whenever they needed something. Now that I have an insider’s perspective, I can confirm all these things do happen, but for good reasons.
Breaking down barriers and inefficient processes– teams can only move faster if barriers are removed, processes are simplified, and roles and responsibilities are clarified. These are areas where executive leadership should determine the most important goals, communicate these throughout the organization, and help remove blockers.
“Agile differs from other types of marketing transformation because it’s not a technology change; it’s a process and mindset change.”
Fail small and fast– a test-and-learn mentality is critical to improving customer experiences, simplifying processes, and learning what works. The key is to test small things first, see what the results are, and then plan larger tests. That way, if a test has suboptimal results, you’ve learned something at a small scale.
Be a self-sufficient squad (whenever possible)– squads should be able to complete most of their work by themselves so that they can move quickly. However, especially at a bank, there are extra levels of regulation. If possible, include a critical, non-marketing team member on your squad or have dedicated, non-squad personnel who can turn around your requests quickly.
Even though these practices may seem disruptive, they are critical to the success of a squad and emphasize the speed at which agile teams move compared to a hierarchical organization. People outside of agile squads may simply see the speed of change, but not all the discipline in planning, testing, and measurement that is occurring.
While I’m only six months in, I’ve been able to realize the benefits of agile, and I am excited to see how it evolves within my squad and the entire marketing organization into the future. I’m learning and refining how I operate in this model on a weekly basis and still have barriers left to break down from my old way of thinking.
