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A Marketer's Guide to Agile Development

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

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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

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

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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

Agile Humor: More Agile Jokes

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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

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

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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 →

A Marketer's Guide to Agile Development

A Marketer’s Guide to Agile Development – Hello Cleveland! If You Can’t See Them, Is It Still Agile?

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The scrum or stand-up meeting is a major part of Agile methodology.  Ideally, everyone works in the same area (called co-location), and talking in person is considered the most effective way to work.  In fact, face-to-face communication is considered so important to the effectiveness of the methodology, it has its own line in the Agile Manifesto: The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

But there’s a wrinkle – it’s estimated that over 25% of American workers now telecommute, and that’s increasing.  Others work in offices located states or even oceans away from their co-workers.   How does this new state of affairs affect the future of Agile methodology?

Well, the simple answer is that it makes it harder and potentially less effective.   The line actually refers to communication between the developers themselves, but business owners, SME’s, and other key players in a project are affected as well.  What are some ways around that?  

CONFERENCE CALLS –  If the scrum is truly 10-15 minutes long like it’s supposed to be, it isn’t so awful if it’s a conference call.   But the problem with conference calls is that they take sometimes take 10-15 minutes to start.   The conference bridge has a glitch that makes everyone sound like they’re speaking from the Field of Dreams cornfield (oddly, sometimes with the same dialogue).  The scrum master says “Who just joined?” eight times after eight beeps because we all know only rubes say their name when the Webex robo-facilitator asks you to.    You all wait a few minutes for the lead developer who it turns out is taking a personal day.  Her boss would have told you that, if he hadn’t overslept the 8am EST call because it’s 5am in Seattle and he got home from the Muse concert at 2:30.  Then you have to ask Monty the mouth-breather to put it on mute, IM Jerry to quit answering emails because his keyboard tapping is making the microphone cut out the first two words of everyone’s sentences, ask Sandy to mute as well because you just heard the last call for two US Airways flights as well as her Starbucks order….that’s the bad news.  The good news is that on a conference call, you can’t see the developers’ eye-rolling when the business people speak.

VIDEO-CONFERENCING

Ha!   Teleconferencing is a cruel hoax.   Remember how disappointed you felt when you were 15 and found out Bill Gates wouldn’t really send you $149 for forwarding that Microsoft email?   I feel that way every time someone suggests a teleconference.  People say it’s real, but no one you know has ever had it pay off.    Some still try.  This usually requires plugging, unplugging, replugging, stabbing the f8 key repeatedly, giving up and locating one of the two people in the whole company who know how to set up teleconference, the guy comes in and performs the A/V equivalent of alchemy and then tells them they just had to hit f8.  By that time, the office you’re trying to remote with has dispersed and the next meeting group is knocking on the window because they need the conference room.

Here are links to a couple of decent articles about the effect on Agile process when teams can’t be in the same place at the same time.  The consensus is that Agile can be done when co-workers aren’t together, but it’s just not quite as good as when they can smell each other’s coffee.  Or Red Bull.

http://www.smartagile.com/2007/11/agile-tips-when-co-location-is-not.html

http://news.oreilly.com/2008/08/is-telework-the-face-of-the-ag.html

A Marketer's Guide to Agile Development

A Marketer’s Guide to Agile Development – The Balance of Power Part 3

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In Part 1, we had a marketer seemingly off his meds mistaking the development team for short order cooks.  In Part 2, we had a developer drunk on cowboy code, smugly delivering what marketing would have asked for if only they had his superior vision.

There could have been a third scenario where the hyperactive marketer and the arrogant developer were in the same scene, but that would be too divisive.   Here goes:

Marketer (played by Bette Midler):   Yo, Poindexter – this is not what we talked about.   This landing page looks like my ferret sicked up.  What the hell is this?

Harried Business Analyst (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman):  Okay guys….   Wait – you know what?  This is not going to end well.  Maybe I don’t want to be in this scene.  In fact,  I’m calling in sick from this scene. (exits)

Developer (played by Shia Lebeouf):   Your RHN was a little light on details, so it was necessary to iterate some continuous improvement on that bad boy.  

Marketer:   My RHN?

Developer:  Requirements on Hooter’s Napkin.

Marketer:   That napkin was so freakin’ agile, my friend  – and more documentation than I’ve ever seen come out of your shop.  But this call to action makes it look like we want them to renew their truck registration at the DMV.  THIS ISN’T WHAT I ORDERED – er, I mean wanted.  

Developer:  What you wanted didn’t match my vision of deep cool.   You said they had to be able to submit a webform on the page, and they can.   And preview all the products.  And personalize them with virtual logos they design on the fly. 

Marketer:  Customers don’t want that.  What makes you think my customers want that?

Developer:   Because it’s cool.  Deeply so.   Customers want cool.  It’s not our fault you blow into work every morning 30 minutes after scrum ends.  Non-attendance means acceptance.  No feedback means acceptance.  So does arguing with any code that’s already through QA.

Marketer:   What are you guys, the Borg?

Developer:  Hell, no.  The Borg was too centralized to be Agile.

Marketer:  Screw it, I don’t need you.  I’ll just have the agency build it.

“Us vs. Them” mentality exists in every business.  But maintaining and nurturing the chasm just isn’t – well, Agile.  I love this quote attributed to Alistair Cockburn, an original Agile Manifesto signatory: “Always remember, there is only us.”

A Marketer's Guide to Agile Development

A Marketer’s Guide to Agile Development – We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Meeting Minutes

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I once read a blog post that said there shouldn’t be any meeting minutes in the world of Agile because:
1) the absence of minutes will force people to attend meetings
2) every moment a developer is forced to document is a lost opportunity to write code.
3) meeting minutes will undermine collaboration by – you guessed it – enabling people to miss meetings.

So if it weren’t for those pesky meeting notes, developers and business owners would go to the meetings instead of watching their kindergardener’s holiday plays, attending funerals, taking a sick day, going to the dentist, or waiting for AAA to fix the flat tire?
So, following that logic, you take them away, and folks willl straighten up and haul their sorry kid-applauding, condolence-spewing, virus-harboring, floss-neglecting, side-of-the-road-loafing asses to the scrum meeting where they belong. Assuming they don’t trip on the hubris on the way to the meeting room.

Come on now. Lighten up. People miss meetings. Eliminating meeting documentation doesn’t make it happen less often. It just magnifies the loss in productivity when it does happen.

But no one really reads them. Really? I just read some today because I had to – uh – miss a meeting. Plus, I wrote some meeting notes last week. That act prevented needing another meeting when a colleague was asked to present insights from that meeting to his boss. Would writing them on his hand be more Agile than having a brief, cohesive synopsis of what we discovered? There are wikis, Sharepoint, MeetingSense – it need not take more than a few minutes to document.

Scrums are supposed to be progress meetings, but they’re frequently more than that. Opinions are sought. Decisions are made. Commitments are pledged. They deserve to be quickly recorded. Don’t want to take the extra few minutes? How long is a “we need to get Brad up to speed” verbal briefing take out of a 15-minute scrum? How long does a call-and-response chorus of “but you said…”, “no, I believe I said” take to resolve?

Write it down already.