Marketing Department vs. Agile Development part1.

-Background
Lack of resource. It seems that every company that I have been involved with seems to have one common problem. Lack of resources in the production level to execute marketing plan. With recent hype with scrum methodology, it seems even harder for marketing department to execute ad hoc campaign that needs to be executed in short time period.

-Execution
I am currently leading a small design team and I have implemented the scrum methodology in conjunction with our IT department. Each sprint is 2 weeks long and we are utilizing the point system to determine the workload and velocity (amount of work that can be done in one sprint). We determined that 1 point equals, the time it takes to create a simple graphic banner when the all the visual elements are given (half day.. approximately).

-Reason for Scrum

Clear understanding of future plan & execution - The team already foresees what tasks are coming ahead. We can now easily distinguish between the executable tasks and epic size pipe dreams.

Better communication and improved reporting system - Any upper management staff can take a look at the burndown chart to see the team's daily performance. (assumption: the staff must be presented at the planning meeting)

Protect individuals from working too hard or slacking off too much

-Issues

Once the sprint is planned and points are assigned, it is hard for the team to take on any other projects that may have higher priority.

One underestimated task can affect the whole sprint.

-Solutions

We had to make sure the backlog is a live document. It means that even when the point is assigned on a task, it can be changed in the middle of the sprint. When we figure that we have overestimated on a task, we need to change the point and commit on other tasks that did not make on this sprint.

--- part 2 on the way... Share