About Vertexia

Scrum thrives in any industry that is challenged with a constantly changing market landscape, and for those who develop products that must evolve or innovate rapidly to stay competitive. Agile also helps keep stakeholder needs and expectations at the forefront of every decision. This focus on customer outcomes can benefit any industry. 

Scrum can be a great choice for marketing teams too. Scrum keeps team members connected to the product they’re marketing, breaks down silos, and gives them the opportunity to contribute to the product’s evolution through market and competitor insights. On a practical level, Scrum can drive continuous delivery of marketing materials, staying within budget and aligned to short-term goals. It can also curate data to what matters most, eliminating empty measurements like CTR and CR which are good for refinement but tell nothing about the success of the campaign. Most importantly, it prevents wasting budget and effort on campaigns that are obsolete by the time they’re ready to launch (i.e. a campaign to promote a new product feature that has since been shelved or significantly redesigned). 

Agile organizations are driven by their WHY, WHAT and HOW. Without a clear direction, the organization can quickly feel like a ship without a rudder. We can help leadership define the company’s North Star and communicate it clearly to the organization. What is the company’s mission? Who are the company’s Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs)? Do they have clear market insights and a solid go-to-market plan? Where in the market do they want to play? Does the company have Customer Personas*, and are they updated regularly including new ones created for potential new features and markets? Is everyone clear on the company’s short- and long-term strategic goals, and how each team must contribute to meet these goals? 

When the foundation is not clear, teams will find it difficult to work in harmony. They will quickly become team-focused and task-oriented, instead of customer-focused and outcome-oriented. Product Teams in particular can quickly lose sight of who they’re creating the product for, and waste time creating and maintaining products and features that no one uses. The question that needs to be asked is “Who are our customers and how can we deliver value to them?”. Agile teams meet regularly to ensure alignment on common goals and share insights and challenges so that the company’s approach is holistic instead of fractured. 

*Not to be confused with Buyer Personas used by B2B and B2B2C marketing teams.

Agile frameworks and methodologies introduce new ways of working, and this can cause anxiety for some people. They feel comfortable being stuck in a rut because they know what to expect and what is expected of them. In these cases, you will often here “But we’ve always done it like that.” and similar phrases. By using change management (CM) and facilitation techniques, we can help guide teams towards the right decisions without resentment or resistance.

The key is to allow team members to be part of the process and make group decisions through guidance and reasoning. There should be ample opportunities for them to provide input and ask questions to understand why changes are being made, and the benefits that can come from these changes. When these improvements are put in practice incrementally, with understanding and autonomy, most team members get on board pretty quickly. For particularly difficult teams, we recommend change management training for team managers so that they can be constructive to the process and know how to effectively respond to pushback.

I hear this fairly often from clients. They tried Scrum and nothing changed, or it was a total disaster! Whatever the circumstances, they never reaped the benefits they were expecting. The first thing to know is that Scrum isn’t the only framework in the Agile arsenal. There are many different options to choose from, including hybrid and personalized choices.

But usually when I do a deep dive into these situations, I discover that the team is not using Scrum as presented in the Scrum Guide. Sure, they’re doing Sprints every two or three weeks, but they are picking their process à la carte. There is no Product Vision. The Product Owner continues to assign tasks to the Developers and set hard deadlines to meet goals. The Product Owner is being given those tasks and deadlines directly from management, because they are too busy to attend Sprint Reviews. And the Scrum Master has become the team’s unofficial therapist.

In this case, more profound training is required for both the Scrum Team and management, so that everyone is applying the Scrum framework properly and consistently. But it should be said that Scrum can certainly uncover weaknesses in company processes and management practices. This should be viewed as a good thing, something to be addressed and resolved instead of blaming Scrum or team members.

The other scenario I come across, although rare, is that the product is simply not appropriate for Scrum. When there is no real need for the product to continuously evolve, Scrum isn’t the best choice. A company that manufactures bowling balls, for example, doesn’t have the need for rapid innovation because the market isn’t that complex. However, they could still benefit from operational agility to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Healthy team dynamics are critical to performance and morale, and dysfunctional teams can have a negative impact on the organization. This is especially true for Agile teams, where adapting to change requires harmony and focus. Luckily there are ways to measure team health and get everyone back on track.

The first step to better team collaboration is assessing team health. We do this through observing the team in action and then administering assessments that can give us insights into the inner workings of the team. Once issues and blockages are identified, we conduct team-building workshops to (re)establish trust and comraderie. We also find that clarifying roles and accountabilities can go a long way towards resolving misunderstandings and resentment between team members. In some cases it can also be beneficial to train managers on conflict resolution and psychological safety techniques.

We would also want to know if this dysfunction is part of a larger problem: widespread employee dissatisfaction within the organization. Measuring employee engagement and overall satisfaction could be a line of investigation, as it has a direct impact on performance, revenue and growth. In these cases, we can recommend ways to improve the employee experience (EX) to create a more positive and empowering work environment.

Agile teams use evidence-based decision-making to have a clear understanding of what they’re working towards, and adjust course each time new information is learned. This includes frequent experimentation and maintaining an open line of communication to your customers. We have several techniques we recommend to test assumptions and gain valuable feedback and insights from the people (or animals!) who are actually using your product.

Thoughtfully chosen measurements are also important to navigate direction and evaluate assumptions. We can assist you in identifying the right measurements to gain true understanding of your market impact and actually leverage the data to guide your direction. Hint: If you are measuring team performance at a task level instead of measuring outcomes at the customer level, it’s time to reassess your approach to data.

We can suggest cross-collaboration techniques to encourage knowledge sharing and team-to-organization alignment. Sharing summaries of customer interactions and user data from the Product Team, market and competitor insights from the Marketing Team, and buyer objections from the Sales Team, as well as contributions from legal regarding compliance and finance regarding budget, ensures that all teams are making decisions based on the same information. It also helps team members see themselves as true stakeholders in the product’s success.