The Agile Marketer

Chapter 11Integrating Marketing and Innovation with Agile

When the innovation team and the marketing team are aligned through their common use of Agile, customers' experience—from their very first steps in the buyer's journey to their ongoing experience of the product or service—can feel utterly consistent, as though driven by the same source. And, as we'll see in upcoming chapters, alignment does more than enable a coherent experience for the customer; it opens up a whole array of new marketing opportunities that were previously not accessible.

Sharing practices enables different groups to speak the same language. Agile thus serves as a platform for strategic alignment. But Agile isn't the be-all and end-all. Some marketing and innovation methods cannot be aligned within the context of Agile. In fact, there are a number of traditional research and strategy practices that exist outside of the Agile approach—notably, long-term planning—but that must be reconciled with Agile. In this chapter, we'll explore several dimensions of Agile alignment, as well as how to reconcile the kinds of feedback that don't fit with the Agile approach.

Aligning Teams

Thus far we've discussed the basic alignment of groups and processes that comes from using Agile as a common practice. And we've explored the ways in which marketers need to update their practices and platforms in order to enable alignment. But alignment isn't a one-way street; it's not just a matter of how marketing syncs with innovation. ...