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“What they built isn’t what we agreed on.”

“The Project Manager told us the rest of the features would be added as enhancements in future sprints. That was three months ago.”,

“Users visit once and don’t come back. We have no tracking because the tags were left out to reduce page weight. IT can’t fit the tag fixes or a user survey into a sprint for another eight weeks.”

Agile is presented to Marketing teams as a win-win. We’re told we’ll get our software delivered faster, and we’ll have more input into the development process. While nobody likes change, that sounds like an enticing promise – so we get on board. When the reality consistently doesn’t match the expectation, the seeds of backlash are born.

Note the use of the word “consistently”. An occasional disappointment, handled nimbly and with emotional intelligence by both teams, can actually do the opposite. Marketing can become Agile proponents.

However, if Marketing is consistently fed a steady diet of “not what we wanted.”, we will first grumble, then commiserate, then, sometimes, revolt. A predictable IT response to this negative feedback is that Marketing’s requirements must have been faulty or incomplete. Gaah! This response feeds right back into the trust issue.

What’s the one thing those huge “things-that-go-thump” Waterfall requirements documents offer the stakeholder? Accountability. We can show Section F, Bulletpoint 14 to the PM and say “See? It’s right there in the requirements”. Marketing doesn’t have that safety cushion in a lean documentation environment. So the blame falls on lean requirements, and eventually on Agile itself.

I once heard someone say, “I am going to actively campaign to bring back Waterfall.”. She found it impossible to get software built to specification in the Agile environment. Her perception was that the Dev team hid behind lean requirements every time they didn’t want to do something or wanted to substitute their own vision for hers. It was the wrong conclusion, but it was arrived at in desperation because she had learned not to trust the process.

Marketers, if you don’t trust your Dev team, do not tiptoe around the subject. Don’t sit through meetings silently, then bad mouth your colleagues when you get back to your own department. Get some bosses involved. Sit down and hash it out. Uncomfortable? Yes. Necessary? Hell yeah. Lack of trust will cause more than a backlash – it can cause chaos. And inertia. You can’t afford either one.

“Don’t involve them, they will just bog things down.”
“Stay under the radar with this project or they will try to hijack it.”
“All they do is whine, don’t bother give them sign-off approval.”
“We must avoid their involvement or it will never get done.”

The “Us vs. Them” dynamic is insidious. It’s always there to some degree in any gathering of humans. But improperly aligned goals, faulty processes, or even unchecked ambition can cause it to strengthen in an organization. Here are a few places you’ll find it:

Sales vs. Marketing

The story is as old as dirt. Sales complains they’re not getting enough leads. Marketing generates more leads. Sales complains the new leads are useless – they’re not ready to close. Marketing sends the unappreciated leads to another channel for nurturing. Sales angrily demands the non-closable leads be given back to them immediately. Marketing stops seeking Sales input on initiatives. Sales starts quietly initiating their own rogue direct mail and email projects at the local level.

Marketing vs. IT

Marketing needs a new landing page for a spring campaign. IT develops all web assets, and estimates 4 weeks. Marketing says it shouldn’t take more than 4 days. IT got burned with all the changes Marketing required on the last landing page, so the unwritten rule is to geneously pad all Marketing estimates – 4 weeks. Marketing instead has their intern build the landing page and host it on his fraternity’s server. When the page goes down during the frat’s Minecraft Marathon weekend, Marketing calls IT for help.

Colocated Team vs. Distributed Team

Anaheim doesn’t scrum with Baltimore because it’s at 5:30 am Anaheim time. Anaheim resents Baltimore’s meddling with their self-direction and their negative impact on velocity metrics – so they don’t ask a lot of questions. Baltimore doesn’t offer the Anaheim unsolicited feedback either. They didn’t want the west coast team in the first place, and their failure wouldn’t cause many tears back east. The lean requirements are carpaccio-thin. The UX team and interaction architect are in Baltimore. The lead programmers are in Anaheim. So let’s see what the product looks like at the end. Yay.

It’s obvious that communication is the antidote. If it’s the higher-ups that are feeding the “Us vs. Them” mentality, you’ve got a dilemma. If you will be punished for reaching out to the “them’s”, then start looking for another job. That’s a sick organization. If not, then you can probably still set an example. Reach out. Manage up. And stay off the Minecraft server.

You can buy the Herman Miller modular furniture with the low partitions. And you can intermix the Marketing team in with the Dev team in those new ergonomi-pods. Before you do, it’s a good idea to do some research about how the two teams spend their workdays.

Many marketers spend significant parts of their workdays on conference calls. Within open office configurations, conference calls can be painful. That thin, chin-high partition between you and your cube mate sitting five feet away isn’t enough to deaden sound. So marketers can’t hear the call well – and they sound to the other callers like they’re dialing in from a frat party, unless they’re constantly on mute. One marketer I know coped by putting the handsfree earpiece in one ear and a foam earplug in the other during calls.

The open configuration can be ideal for pair programmers – but it can be distracting for two ad managers who talk to lettershops and media buyers all day long. There’s little advantage to sitting within earshot of all your colleagues while doing that kind of work. And distraction saps efficiency.

The setup makes it easy to just pop on over to your colleague with a question. Yet marketers and programmers have very different rhythms to their workday. Programmers have specific tasks to perform, but usually have some latitude in when and how they’ll accomplish them. Marketers generally have scheduled appointments all day. Asking marketers questions as they arise often is efficient for the programmer, but not so much for the marketer.

Open office configurations can be challenging for supervisors, regardless of which department they’re in. Unless they occupy a space which allows them to work with their back to a wall or window, their computer screens are an open book to subordinates. If there aren’t enough walls or windows to go around, any work dealing with personnel or headcount budgeting must be done somewhere else.

Open office configurations do indeed deliver on the promise of fostering collaboration. They can be positively liberating for the right group of people – and erode the quality of work life for others. They’re not a one-size-fits-all solution. Do some homework and determine how people do their work all day long before signing that purchase order to replace every workstation.