Question time! Tell us about yourself! How are you applying Agile in your organization today? What kinds of teams are they (IT, Marketing, other)? Why did you decide to adopt Agile? How is it going so far?

[MelissaPi1]

I’ll start by introducing myself, and I’ll share an example that I heard from a customer recently. I’m Melisa Pickering and I’m a career Agilist. I joined Workfront in July of 2020 to work on developing our Agile functionality. Prior to Workfront, I was at SolutionsIQ, a Business Agility consulting group within Accenture, and I have also led multiple organizational Agile transformations, as well as led Agile organizations. I’m super excited to be having a conversation with you all!!

Hey, @Andy Page‚ @Brian Toplicar - inactive‚ @Chris O'Neal‚ @Danielle Riccitelli - inactive‚ @Melissa Talcott‚ @Melissa Talcott‚ @Patrick Muir - inactive‚ - can you all introduce yourselves too?

And here’s my customer situation example:

“The organization is moving to Agile because there is a new Head of Marketing Ops, and she used Agile in her past role. We’re moving to more cross-functional teams, expanding agility to help connect the whole global marketing picture. So, it’s a top down approach, but from what we’ve seen so far, we’re on board. Right now, it’s just for the Marketing Ops teams, about 5 teams. We all went through some basic training, and we also have an Agile coach from a different part of the organization, but we are still learning how to write good stories and switch from hours to story points. We’re having trouble because there’s so much cross-team work, we’re still not able get a handle on predictability.”

[ChrisO_1]

I've been at Workfront/Adobe for several years. In my past life in product management I led Agile dev teams, including at a startup where we built the discipline for our new company from the ground floor. In my current role of product marketing, I want to better understand the hopes, hindrances, and best practices of our Agile practitioners out there. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of the discussion!

[Former Community Member]

Hello everyone! I have been working for Workfront for that last several years as a Solutions Advisor helping customers learn how to get the most value out of our tool. I am a certified Agilest, and l Iove discussing how teams are using Agile to push even more value out the their customers. Can't wait to speak to all of you about how you are using Agile in Workfront and all of your dreams of where it could go!

[MelissaTa]

Hi! I spent the last two years at Workfront managing the internal Studio team. We used the Kanban functionality within Workfront with some Scrum meetings for communication. I have recently transitioned my role and am now working with Adobe to implement Workfront across all of marketing. Most of my career has been in marketing or agencies, and I love helping others figure out how they can implement Agile into their marketing org. I am an Advanced Certified Scrum Master and recently became certified in Marketing Agility. I am so excited to be a part of this discussion and look forward to connecting with everyone. Thanks!

[BeckyDa]

Hi! I'm so excited that this is a group that the product managers follow, because I have feedback and am not short of opinions. :)

I lead a MarTech team that has been slowing implementing Agile processes since January. We have daily stand ups, and we were using the Kanban view in Workfront until this week when we switched to Scrum in an effort to better align all our big projects.

The biggest obstacles I'm seeing is that we handle due dates from multiple stakeholders, and it would be nice to include those due dates in our iteration. I know, I know, that goes against Scrum's iterations ideal. But for marketing teams supporting other brands, it's a lot to convince multiple brands we serve to think of their projects in two week sprints. They have a date when an email HAS to drop and how do we keep track of whether we succeed in that or not? It would be nice to keep the original "due date", but also include the task in our iteration.

[DavePa1]

@Becky Daniel‚ we have run into a similar issue. Our Fundraising team submits requests for proposals that have to be delivered before the investor meeting. We keep that date in the system, but the tasks for the proposal are put in the regular sprints. Those who oversee proposal production ensure the proposals are delivered on or before the target date (we use the term "Agreed Upon Date" and have a custom field for it).

As you can see, we have taken some liberties with Agile and Scrum to better suit the process to our teams.

Dave Parker

[MelissaPi1]

Thanks for posting @Dave Parker‚ and sharing your scenario! I think having items with due-dates inside of sprints is a common scenario for all kinds of teams (and I even think that Agile/Scrum/etc has taken this kind of thing into account now). Curious, do you consider the "request for proposal" kind of like a project/epic kind of artifact? Are the stories/tasks spread across teams? How do the proposal production overseers view and coordinate all of the work?

[DavePa1]

We convert the request into a project. We have a Communications Lead who assesses whether we need content written, as the proposals consist of repeatable content blocks that describe our marketable products. When a new product is active, we start an initiative/project for that content, but sometimes Sales gets ahead of us and requests a proposal for a product that doesn't have a writeup.

If everything already exists, it's pretty much just layout work in InDesign. We've already committed to delivery in two weeks or less, but the requests don't always line up neatly with our sprints.

If we have all the content for a proposal, only 3 people need to touch it: Editor, Designer, and Proofer.

[MelissaPi1]

Great to meet you, @Becky Daniel‚ , and thanks for posting! I'm excited to work with you and all of our customers. Thanks for sharing this specific issue. I totally agree that dates are a real thing (I think even Scrum acknowledges this), so we do have an item in our backlog to improve the iteration+date experience. I'll add your feedback into the notes, and I expect that we'll share some wireframes here when we get to that item. Curious, how are you working around this in Workfront today? Thank you!

[BeckyDa]

Hi @Melissa Pickering‚ ! We currently aren't including anything with a specific deadline in the iterations -- only longer term projects. It's not a great solution.

[MelissaPi1]

@Becky Daniel‚ so do you mean that the Projects/Epics that have date driven work don't get worked on by agile teams, or that the date driven tasks/stories just don't go into iterations? Are there projects/epics that have both date driven and non date driven tasks?

[BeckyDa]

The date driven tasks don't go into iterations. If the project has any part that is date driven during an iteration, it won't be part of the iteration.