The advantages of Agile for development teams are well-known, but case studies with business teams are rarer. Sometimes applying Agile to business teams can feel like forcing a round peg a square hole. Is Agile the best solution for every team? Marcello and Nicole share their experiences applying Agile practices to a cross-functional marketing team at SilverStripe. For business teams, applying Agile can lead to higher productivity, better cross-team alignment and stronger resilience. Agile gives marketers an edge - helping them adapt to the pace of change in tech, focus on results not outputs and become more data-driven. However not all Agile techniques translate naturally outside development. Applying Agile to business teams requires experimentation and continuous improvement. It's a process that comes with growing pains especially as marketers tend to embrace perfection over iterating! Learn what worked, what didn't, and mistakes to avoid.

1. Marketing & Agile:
Best friends or worst enemies?
Nicole Williams
Head of Product, SilverStripe
Marcello Commisso
Agile Practice Coach, BNZ

2. Who are you?

3. What is Marketing?

7. What is modern Marketing?

8. Brand + Culture
Science + Art
Pull over Push
Experimentation

9. Who is SilverStripe?

10. SilverStripe (the really short version)
● 78 people in Wellington, Auckland & London
● Founded by 3 Wellingtonians, privately owned
● Company values - aligned with Agile principles
○ Continuous improvement over perfection
○ Collaboration over control

11. SilverStripe (the really short version)
● Bespoke web projects + products
● SilverStripe Open Source CMS - 110,000+ websites
● Common Web Platform for NZ Government
● Amazon Cloud Platform-as-a-Service

12. Marketing at SilverStripe
● Branding / positioning
● Lead generation
● Product research
● Market validation
● Sales messaging

13. Learning to be a
Product Owner

14. Nicole v1.0
Traditional marketing background
Media booked at start of FY
Perfectionist

15. “It will be the single hardest and most-
-rewarding role you ever hold.-
-There will be times you want to give up,-
-but in the end you’ll love them and love-
-being a product owner” -
- Clarion Cloughan, Head of Engineering, Xero

16. Agile + marketing challenges
● Specialisation e.g. analytics
● Fixed deadlines e.g. events
● Recurring tasks
● Traditional silo thinking
● External dependencies
M

17. Marketing evolution
● Marketing Manager - 1 person alone
● Storytellers - big cross functional team
● Neuron boosters + Rainmakers (two separate teams -
community dev and marketing)
● Rainmakers (small design oriented team)
● CommuniKats (marketing focused team with PO)

18. What worked for us

19. 5 things that worked for us...
1. Give the team a mission
Set clear short term goals (OKRs)
2. Become more data-driven
3. Cross-functional teams
4. Co-locate marketing team with product team
Design for collaboration
Processes for knowledge sharing
5. Never stop experimenting (improving) how you work
M

20. 1. Give the team a mission
and set clear goals

21. Objectives & Key Results
● Used by Google, Linkedin, Zynga
● Quarterly goals linked to 1 - 5 year plans
● Connects company/team/individual goals
“[OKRs] are a tool for motivating and aligning people to work together. They
increase transparency, accountability and empowerment." ~ Angus Davis, CEO,
Swipely
Google Ventures - video

22. ● Knowing the most important
things to track
● Connects day-to-day with
bigger picture
● Provides common goals
across teams
OKRs provide purpose

23. Don’t rely on opinions and gut feelings
2. Become data-driven

24. Data-driven means…
● Less over more
● High impact metrics
● What will change if we succeed?

25. 3. Cross functional teams

26. Cross functional teams, Pi-shaped people
CodingEvents AnalyticsOnboardingCommunity
Front end
Back end
CMS UI
UX
Blogs
Docs
Lessons
Meetups
Design
Support

27. Cross functional teams, T-shaped people
Content
marketingSocial
Digital
marketing
SEO /
SEMAnalytics
Marketing
Automation
Community
Wide breadth of knowledge across overlapping disciplines
Distribution
Buying journey
Content types
Audience
Brand strategy
Deep knowledge,
experience and
ability in one (or a
few) fields

28. Outward facing teams
Product
marketing
specialist
Campaign
Manager
(PO)
Graphic
Designer
Sales
Team
UX
Team
Product
Teams

29. Get people and teams to work together:
4. Designing for collaboration

30. Real collaboration
● Co-location with product and sales
● Shared Sprint Demos (Show & Tells)
● Involving other teams in backlog refinement
● Culture of knowledge sharing
● Setting common goals

31. Create a culture of learning
5. Keep experimenting

32. Monthly PMS meetings
● Product, sales and marketing
● Tactical experiments
● What question do we need to answer next?

33. Experiments board

34. But experiments
slows us down...
● Putting value on learning
● OK to “fail fast”
● Experiments can be quick,
small and cheap

35. Other Agile observations,
tips and tricks

36. Scrum or Kanban?

37. Scrum
○ Introduce Agile thinking to a team (breaking down
work, prioritising etc.)
○ Deadlines for delivery when team have problems
completing work

38. Kanban
○ Mapping the current process is easy to start with
○ Team with strong specialisations and individual tasks
○ Experienced team where work don’t fit in Sprint cycles

39. Kamishibai board (for recurring tasks)

40. Some unsolved challenges

41. Unsolved challenges
● Integrating marketing in full product lifecycle
● Becoming a truly cross-functional team
● External dependencies

42. Does Agile work for Marketing?

43. Yes! Agile Marketing Manifesto
● Responding to change over following a plan
● Rapid iterations over Big-Bang campaigns
● Testing and data over opinions and assumptions
● Many small experiments over a few large bets
● Individuals and interactions over one size fits all
● Collaboration over silos and hierarchy

44. Can marketeers become
awesome Product Owners?

45. Yes!
● Have strong customer focus
● Can “sell” the vision to inside and outside of the team
● Understand market and competition
● Are data-driven
● Collaborate and communicate

46. The future of marketing at SilverStripe
● Marketing reports into Product
● Greater transparency across teams
● Teams split over multiple countries
● More tightly coupled with product teams

47. Nicole v 2.0
Experiments over Perfection
Team engagement over Control
Agile thinking over One-off successes
Head of Product @ SilverStripe

48. Questions?
Marketing & Agile:
Best friends or worst enemies?
Nicole Williams
Head of Product, SilverStripe
Twitter: @envycollect
Marcello Commisso
Agile Practice Coach, BNZ
Contact: marcello@commisso.dk