I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between Epics, User Stories and Tasks in the practice of Scrum and particularly how those relationships are different for marketers compared to developers. Those differences have led me to conclude that marketers who practice Scrum need a fourth construct, which I call a deliverable.
Most Agile Marketing teams use either Scrum or Kanban methods to manage their work. If you use Scrum, you’ll need to use either story points or hours to limit how much work you take on in any given sprint. Which is best for Agile Marketing?
I recently came across two tools that despite being designed for Agile Development, can be used to manage Agile Marketing projects. Both tools have a steeper learning curve than a Kanban tool like Trello, but with that learning comes greater power and flexibility.
OnTime ScrumOnTime Scrum is a project management and bug tracking tool for Scrum teams from AxoSoft.
Agile Marketing teams that are using Scrum begin the Sprint process with an Agile Marketing Sprint Planning session. Sprint Planning, one of the four key “ceremonies” of Scrum (the others are the Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective and the daily Scrum), establishes the baseline assumptions of the company’s approach to the market, the goals of the Sprint, and the list of activities which the marketing team will do to reach those goals. To say that it is important to the success of the Sprint, and to the success of the marketing team, would be an understatement.
So how does one run a successful Agile Marketing Sprint Planning session? What are the key agenda items? What are the inputs? What are the outputs? I’ll try to answer these questions and more in this post.
Join the free, global community at the Agile Marketing Alliance.
Membership is free.