The Six Disciplines of Agile Marketing

Chapter 11Validated Learning

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

—Usually attributed to Mark Twain, American writer and humorist

The Agile Marketing Manifesto includes three values that describe the importance of continuous improvement:

1. Rapid iterations over big-bang campaigns
2. Testing and data over opinions and conventions
3. Many small experiments over a few large bets

Rapid iterations. Testing and data. Experiments. Approaching marketing with these elements foremost in your mind is at the heart of the fourth discipline: validated learning.

The Importance of Iteration

In Chapter 2, we looked at American aeronautical engineer Paul MacCready and how iteration earned him the Kremer prize in 1977 with the Gossamer Condor.

Agile marketers can take away several lessons from that story, and the importance of iteration is first among those. Many design features (the shape of the airfoil, the controls, the propeller) had to be tested and improved over hundreds of iterations to achieve success. The team could draw many of these designs on paper, but until each was tested, no one knew whether any would work.

Next is the importance of designing systems that enable ever faster iteration. If your approach limits you to three or four iterations per year, the team that iterates three or four times per week is eating your lunch. If finding the right solution takes hundreds of iterations, the team whose approach supports ...