The Six Disciplines of Agile Marketing

Chapter 23Integrating Agile with Traditional Marketing Methods

Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.

—Victor Hugo, French poet, novelist, and dramatist

As an organization embarks on the Agile marketing journey, some part or parts of the organization will continue to use traditional marketing methods. Even where Agile practice is established, some marketing projects and functions do not practice Agile methodologies.

So how do you integrate Agile and traditional marketing methods? Although it's not that difficult, you can employ a few tips and tricks to make it as straightforward as possible.

Which Marketing Functions Lend Themselves to Agile?

We can classify marketing functions by whether they can be planned for or not, and by whether it makes sense to deliver outputs and measure outcomes at regular intervals. Those functions that satisfy both criteria tend to lend themselves to Scrum. Those that cannot be planned and those with output delivered as a steady stream of work lend themselves to the Kanban model. And a few marketing functions lend themselves to traditional methodologies, as shown in Figure 23.1.

Think of this mapping as guidance. On the ground, each team selects a method that works for them. Teams sometimes use Scrum to manage events. They have a well thought-out process for each event (a webinar, say) and they implement parts of the process in Sprints before and after the event. Other teams will use Kanban ...