When learning that Stack Moxie’s marketing department was transforming into a scrum framework, I felt both the excitement and pressure that comes with true transparency within Stack Moxie. Instead of each person working on their own projects, scrum allows us to work together and achieve goals as a team. Accountability plays an essential role in everything running smoothly, so working in an environment that encourages communication with personal blocks has the potential to reduce misunderstandings and eliminate the possibility of missing deadlines.
What Scrum is to Me
I have personally never worked in an environment that labeled marketing as “agile” or focused on “scrum” tactics, so this is a new concept to work through. I’ve always considered these buzzwords to align more with software development teams and goals. This transformation has forced me to see marketing in a new way and helps me understand how important my work is to our marketing efforts and the overall company’s success.
In the past, I’ve always completed my necessary tasks and waited for other departments to reach out when they needed something. Now, with weekly marketing demos and backlog meetings, we’re able to plan out our time efficiently and take into account where our focus needs to be. I also feel like our internal communication through Slack has improved, and the clear outlines within Teamwork give everyone a better understanding of what needs completion throughout the week.
Scrum: The Ideal Outcome
Having a framework in places that gets sprints completed smoothly like freshly-oiled gears is an ideal outcome. Recently, just seeing the task breakdown for each project has allowed us to come together as a team and delegate responsibilities. It seems to have made us more productive and holds each person accountable for tasks that prevent someone else from completing their assigned work.
Sometimes it’s hard not to put down one goal and work on another because it’s easier. Personal opinions can get in the way of priorities, and things can get pushed out longer than planned. I hope to talk through our ideas together and decide what’s best for the team within each sprint.
My Fears About Scrum
I am interested in seeing how this transformation plays out, especially when someone needs to focus on a critical task that doesn’t directly affect our sprint goals. Though I fear that individual responsibilities might not be completed in these instances, knowing that we have a solid team to count on puts my anxiety at ease. I also fear that other things will fall through the cracks that are deemed “less important” than what we have prioritized for our sprint. Future projects might demand more attention than others, and each of our marketing team members has unique abilities— relying on another to pick up the slack without the necessary skills could become an issue. Flexibility and readjusting goals will be crucial to our success, so it’s up to us to make sure that we vocalize when we need to adapt and shift gears.
Excited for the Future
At the end of the day, I know that our marketing team is as solid as our company, and I hope that scrum works for us. Designating ownership to weekly projects creates a blameless culture, which means that we succeed or fail together. All I can ask for is that we continue to improve our process, grow as a team, and learn what works best for us as a whole.