A Marketer’s Guide to Agile Development – Top Five Reasons Agile Teams Hate Marketers

In a previous column, we reviewed some reasons why some marketers give Agile the stink-eye. Let’s review why developers may be sending that stink-eye right back at ’em.

They’re annoyed – by short attention span theatre.
Marketing is all about the art of the possible. Brighter, shinier, cooler possibilities assail marketer’s brains constantly – it’s relentless. Those deep thoughts surface at inopportune times – like when their original, slightly less cool vision is in testing phase. Intellectually, they may know the enhancement should wait for the next sprint. But emotionally, this new cooler version becomes their vision of the finished project. So they become serial badgerers, imploring the PM and the developers to make “this one little change” here, “a small tweak” there. Hey marketers – a little discipline please. If you catch yourself uttering a sentence that begins with “keep it exactly the same, except….”, snap the elastic on your wrist and go back to your desk.

Sure, some marketers argue that Agile environments are supposed to welcome changing requirements. They do, in theory. The GOP welcomes healthy bipartisan debate in theory too. Theories are like that. Unlike the GOP, Agile doesn’t filibuster – it simply pushes the change to backlog. Or depending on the rank and title of the badgerer, stays late and does it, and harbors resentment.

They’re misunderstood – most marketers are clueless about sprint process.
Many marketers do actually think that if their request is not yet in production, they can still make changes, even if it’s 3 in the afternoon and the release is at 5:30. They’re not really trying to be jerks, they simply don’t know better. But they should. Responsible marketers, with the help of the project manager and/or scrum manager, learn the rhythms of the development organization that brings their ideas to life. When they do, they understand that recalcitrance isn’t the only reason behind a refusal to accept a change. But development teams take notice – once a marketer has taken the time to understand and honor your process, you’ll have to stick by your process too. No more blue smoke and mirrors.

They’re resentful – they’re the ones staying til 8:30 on Friday night.
Let’s just say it. Marketers have a reputation of not working very hard. Full disclosure, I’m in Marketing. That Dilbert cartoon with the sign that says “Marketing – 2 Drink Mininum” hangs on my wall. But trust me, most of us work our share of nights and weekends – usually individually instead of communally. Maybe because we’re not visibly toiling away night after night as a department, development teams can sometimes assume that they’re doing all the heavy lifting while Marketing lounges on divans eating bon bons while watching Oprah. That’s a myth. We only eat bon bons if the mailhouse vendor sends them at Christmas. And we only watch Oprah when we’re home sick. Some of us not even then.

They’re apprehensive – Marketing can declare all their work a failure.
A pet peeve of mine is when I’m in a meeting where someone justifies a decision with “well, I think users would want…” I just want to cut off that sentence with an air horn. Good marketers test. Good marketers declare success metrics for their initiatives, and Agile teams should abide by the same set of metrics. In my experience, when Agile teams reject Marketing’s analytics in favor of their own metrics, usually their own analytics tell them they don’t need to change their code. Objective, dispassionate measurement makes continuous improvement possible. It doesn’t matter if a developer missed his high school reunion to code the new product page, or the Angel Gabriel handed the style guide down from the sky to the CMO on an iPad. If Marketing Analytics results show that it’s decreasing rather than improving conversions, that page is going bye bye until they figure out why.

They’re jealous – Marketing gets all the cool swag.
The new branding campaign launches. Marketing gets the leather bomber jackets with the new logo on the sleeve. The developers get logo coffee mugs that can’t go in the dishwasher. Marketing celebrates the launch at Le Chateau Tres Cher. The developers stay back at the office with a Quizno’s platter to code the hot fixes. This dynamic is actually changing in some organizations. Marketing budgets aren’t what they used to be. And IT executives can order swag too.

A Marketer’s Guide to Agile Development – Wait…So Following a Plan is Bad?

The Agile Manifesto is quite clear about how much it values following a plan – not so much. Response to change gets the love instead.

Therein lies the marketer’s dilemma. CMO’s notoriously have a hot nut for project roadmaps – but Agile development teams often don’t welcome detailed plans – ooh, ick, they’re so Waterfally. So how do you assure your sort-of-Agile-not-really leader that you are executing on a marketing project plan that’s not being sequentially followed by the folks who are actually building the software?

Show him or her your backlog items.
It may be hard to get your C-level comfortable with a list of tasks that you have no guarantee will be done by the next sprint. You could add in the kanban, which is more of an operational aide than a executive presentation medium. But at least you can prove that you understand and have presented to the tech foks what needs to be done.

Demo the latest iteration of working software.
Sure – but beware of expectations. Marketing and Technology executives can define “working software” very differently. The apps dev team delivered a screen for the April 16th sprint release that slowly brings up week-old data from the dev server when you click the “submit” button. Server call performance will be addressed in a future sprint. The CTO: sprint mission accomplished. The CMO: my order history doesn’t come up – this thing doesn’t work.

Some advice – if the current iteration isn’t yet optimized for performance, don’t show it to the CMO. Sometime between pressing the “Let’s Get Started” button and the 112 seconds the app takes to complete the server call, you’ll lose trust. If the current iteration works with reasonable speed, but is missing some non-essential functionality, it probably won’t hurt to show the progress being made, with the proper caveats and disclaimers.

Pretend it’s still waterfall.
Show the wireframe of the screen in active development, and say “they’re working on this part now”. Hey, that worked for years.

A Marketer’s Guide to Agile Development – What Agile Can and Can’t Do

Agile can’t: Make stupid people smart.
Agile can: Make smart people more efficient.

Agile can’t: Properly prioritize objectives if business owners can’t.
Agile can: Help business owners to properly weigh priorities.

Agile can’t: Fix a failing strategy with good process.
Agile can: Use good process to continuously improve a flawed strategy.

Agile can’t: Compensate for a profound lack of resources.
Agile can: Make the most of limited resources.

Agile can’t: Replace corporate vision with what’s cool and fun to work on.
Agile can: Inject cool and fun into the corporate vision.

Agile can’t: Be a business objective.
Agile can: Help business objectives become reality.

A Marketer’s Guide to Agile Development – Spanish Inquisition Analytics

CMOs say it all the time.  “The great thing about digital marketing is that you have hard data to know what’s working. Data doesn’t lie.”

Nonsense. Data does lie. Data lies all the time. Like a rug.

Spanish Inquisition Analytics means torturing the data until it says what you want it to say.  Reminds me of my youth when I was learning to drive a stick-shift in hilly New England – grind it till it fits.

I’m not talking about spin. If you completed 100 projects through April, then added 5 more in May and 10 more in June, you’re more likely to say:

“we saw a 100% incremental gain in month-over-month project completions in June” (June minus May, divided by May)

than

“we increased the number of completed projects by 9.52% in June.” (10 in June divided by 105 total at the end of May)

Both statements are factual. The first makes the project manager look better on a PowerPoint slide, and that’s okay – it’s just spin. Marketers frikkin’ love spin – having invented it and all.

Spanish Inquisition analytics aren’t mere spin -they’re deliberately crafted to mislead. While true analytics prove or disprove a hypothesis, Spanish Inquisition analytics assumes a positive position, then changes or eliminates data that doesn’t support that proof. Here’s an example uncovered in July 2010 by MediaMatters.org:

Fox News showed this chart to support a story that job loss was still soaring. But since the data didn’t support their premise, they tortured it by cherry-picking the quarterly results that fit their premise, and eliminating those that did not. Notice the timing of the data points. The first data point is December 2007. The second is 9 months later, the third just 6 months later, and the fourth a whopping 15 months later. The data they used is technically correct – but it’s showing cumulative instead of incremental data on an improperly paced timeline. The story? US jobs are still being dropped faster than 8am Foundations of Western Civilization. The reality? Here’s how the data actually looked – a decidedly different story.

It’s like picking out the cheese, tomatoes and croutons out of a salad and passing it off as pizza.

Another trick is to skew the research itself to support your aims. Target a marketing campaign solely to customers who have bought every iteration of your software on their release dates, and you’re likely to report a 95% take rate. But you better stay away from reporting the ROI -because you just paid to get people to buy who would have bought anyway. Test a targeted web product only amongst your allies and immediate circle, and you’ll get data, alright. But use that data to project satisfaction with your site, and you’ll be blindsided at launch when your target audiences don’t find it true to their vibe.

You want to look good? Get some Botox. You want to get some real insight? Let your data people tell the real story. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

POSTSCRIPT – February 24, 2011

Hey kids, here’s a brand new way to torture analytics from – you guessed it – your friends at the Fox News Academy of Creative Analytics. If Gallup Poll results don’t support your argument, just invert them! 61% of Americans oppose taking away collective bargaining rights? Presto! 61% of Americans now favor it!  Yup, this actually made it on the air. Here’s a link to the story.

Full disclosure: I lean left. Yet, my beef with Fox in these two cases are as a data professional rather than a liberal. Facts aren’t inherently truths. But facts changed to support predetermined conclusions are inherently lies – regardless of ideology. 

Agile Humor: More Agile Jokes

Did you hear about the Spanish Inquisition web analytics tool?
It tortures the data until it says what you want it to say.

What’s the difference between Agile and the Supreme Court?
There are women on the Supreme Court.

Why is daily scrum like a shot in the backside?
Either way, you won’t be able to sit down for 15 minutes.

Why is a code release failure like the Meadowlands after a Springsteen concert?
Someone’s staying all night to clean up the mess, and it probably ain’t the Boss.

Why is are poorly drafted business requirements like a vampire movie?
The stakeholder ends up getting it in the neck.

[rimshot] I’m here all week…try the veal…don’t forget to tip your waiters and waitresses.

A Marketer’s Guide to Agile Development – Top 5 Reasons Marketers Hate Agile

DISTRUST – THEY’VE BEEN BULLIED BY A ZEALOT
Agile can be a revolutionary marvel when everyone keeps their egos in check – Marketers’ egos especially. But marketers feel burned when Agile development professionals, maybe drunk on empowerment, start delivering what they think the marketer should have asked for instead of what they actually did ask for. As said in previous posts, the marketer blames Agile practice for this arrogance, not the practitioner. Especially when they’re on the receiving end of the lecture on how there’s no need for turf wars because Agile is collaborative.

FEAR – THEY’RE AFRAID FOR THEIR JOBS
Some Agile teams mistake empowerment for omnipotence. User experience, email best practice, product demand and ROI, SEO impacts, call-to-action placement – marketers develop deep expertise on best practices over long periods of study and immersion. Do they feel threatened when an Agile developer two years out of school feels her expertise equals theirs because she read “Don’t Make Me Think” over the weekend? Affirmative.

FATIGUE – THEY’RE AFRAID TO TAKE A DAY OFF
The marketer’s project requirement was scheduled to take 2 hours of coding time, but the dev team hit a snag. In the land of Waterfall, marketers were rarely if ever asked to stop their daily activities to accommodate coding questions. No, they’d be asked if they had an opening on Friday, (sorry, golf event, how’s Tuesday?) to discuss the coding dilemma nice and civilized over an International Coffee Cafe Mocha in the conference room with the new comfy chairs. Then Agile comes. Suddenly, marketers are stalked on their way to the loo to make decisions NOW. No scheduling. No Cafe Mocha. Standing, no comfy chairs. And if the marketer or a proxy isn’t available, a member of the development team makes the decision for them. Yeah, tee off without me, guys. And pass me a can of Monster.

JEALOUSY – THEY’RE NO LONGER THE COOL ONES
Marketers always attended the cool events and conferences, controlled the cool swag items in the prize closet, wore the cool threads. Now the dev team gets the paintball outing, attends SES on the opposite coast, has the interesting desk toys and rocks matching team logo retro bowling shirts. Marketers who perceive loss of status tend not to embrace their usurpers with open arms.

CYNICISM – BEEN THERE, DONE THAT, BOUGHT THE SOUVENIR TEASPOON.
What does Agile remind some marketers of? Sweatin’ to the oldies. MBO. Process Re-Engineering. Six Sigma. Quality Circle. Knowledge Management. Total Quality Monitoring. The Ultimate Question. Peak Performance. One Minute Manager. Email blast. Greed is Good. Once these initiatives were that dreamy guy in the Lethal Weapon movies, now they’re just Mel Gibson. Many marketers don’t want to get all sweaty again for a fad that will fall out of fashion. So they simply stall and wait for it to be over. You know, like Prince says the Internet is.

A Marketer’s Guide to Agile Development – I Pledge Non-Allegiance

Sign the Oath of Non-Allegiance!

Oath of Non-Allegiance

“I promise not to exclude from consideration any idea based on its source, but to consider ideas across schools and heritages in order to find the ones that best suit the current situation.”

Love, love, love this oath – from our friend Alistair Cockburn. Why is it needed? To remind turf warriors and methodology zealots that “Us versus Them” intolerance robs the business of progress. The Oath has lots of uses, because projects unfortunately tend to spawn multiple factions: Continue reading A Marketer’s Guide to Agile Development – I Pledge Non-Allegiance

Marketing Meets IT