The Agile Marketer

About the Author

Roland Smart believes that marketing is going through a transformation driven by new technologies and practices. He is a proponent of integrating Agile—the approach that revolutionized software development—with marketing. Doing so positions the chief marketing officer alongside the chief product officer as the two primary drivers of the business. This, in turn, enables the chief marketing officer to serve as the steward of the overall customer experience—not just the brand—at a time when companies are increasingly competing on this basis.

Roland is a product-oriented marketing leader who serves as the VP of social and community marketing at Oracle. As such, he oversees Oracle's user communities and advocacy program. He also manages acquired marketing technologies (e.g., Compendium) for the corporate marketing group. Roland joined Oracle through its acquisition of Involver, a social technology platform. Before that, he led the marketing team at Sprout, a social/mobile ad creation platform (acquired by InMobi). Roland developed a passion for product development, user experience, and agile practices while running the marketing team at Adaptive Path, a leading San Francisco–based user experience design firm (acquired by CapitalOne).

Roland lives with his wife and son in Marin, California, where he can often be found hiking and mountain biking in Golden Gate National Recreation Area.