The Agile Marketer

Chapter 7Kanban: Lean Meets Agile

Some marketing programs just won't fit nicely into the structure of Scrum, and that's okay. The goal here should not be to force everything into one method. Agile offers a range of methods that you can tailor to your organization or individual initiatives. Scrum will be better suited to certain projects, and Kanban to others. For some projects, a combination of the two would be best. For a few, predictive methods like Waterfall would be a better fit. That's why it's important to familiarize yourself with a range of methods so you can apply the right one to the job.

Two examples illustrate this point. The first comes directly from my experience working in the social technology industry and with big brands to manage their social presence and listening programs. This is an environment in which being agile (lowercase a, as in rapid response) is critical and well-suited for an Agile method (capital A, as in the approach). While it may be possible to plan strategic initiatives that will run for several months, things change quickly based on social engagement. Consider Wieden+Kennedy's ad campaign for Old Spice, widely known as “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” It started as a traditional campaign, with a handful of commercials featuring actor and former athlete Isaiah Mustafa as the Old Spice Man. These spots triggered a flood of YouTube comments, tweets, and questions on Yahoo! Answers, which, in turn, prompted the ad agency to produce what ended ...