Guide to Building an Agile In-House Team

“Brand and creative teams that adopt an agile process will find that it improves efficiency, and ultimately allows the team to produce higher quality work.” – Robin Colangelo, Global Director of Creative Services, White & Case

Agile is nothing new to software development, IT, and broader project management teams, but to those of us on brand and creative teams it is one of the biggest buzzwords in the industry. For the past few years, we’ve heard about moving from “waterfall” to “agile,” but what really is agile marketing, and what are best practices for implementing an agile process.
Without a doubt, an agile methodology can be extremely valuable for brand and creative teams. Adopting an agile process can help teams hit their KPIs, balance workloads, improve efficiency, and ultimately produce higher quality work.

In this guide:

  • What agile marketing actually is
  • How to build a custom agile process for your team
  • Three tips for a successful agile implementation

What is Agile?

Having an agile process enables teams to quickly and easily respond to change. This allows a team to be nimble and sense check for quick wins and fast fails during a project. By breaking up a project into smaller parts, the team is able to tackle multiple sequential steps in a campaign at once, allowing for pivots mid-project if needed. In contrast is the traditional “waterfall” approach, where projects follow a linear model until they are completed.

The term “agile” is used to describe several distinct methods of organizing work based on a few guiding principles:

  • Be flexible to respond to change rather than following a rigid plan
  • Create adaptive, iterative campaigns rather than linear “big-bang” campaigns
  • Rely on testing a data rather than opinions and conventions
  • Encourage collaboration and autonomy rather than working in silos with traditional hierarchy

Why Agile Marketing?

While agile methodologies were originally conceived by and for software development teams, many of the principles and key elements translate easily and provide significant benefits for brand and creative teams. By implementing an agile workflow, teams can expect to:

  1. Deliver work sooner
  2. Produce better work
  3. Improve team collaboration

Tools of the Trade

When considering moving to an agile process, the first question teams ask is “what software will I need?” Having the right tools to support your new workflow is crucial to the successful of an agile process. Key software in the lineup are collaboration tools and project management.

Features in a software to look for include

  • Collaborative Request Intake
  • Dynamic Work Views
  • Dependences & Resource Management
  • Continuous Collaboration
  • Workflow Automation
  • Reporting

Tips and considerations for going agile

  • How big is your team?
  • What are your goals, and how do you report on them?
  • How can your team pare down work into sprints, and what does being iterative look like?
  • What is wrong with your current process?

Ensure a successful implementation

  • Customize your workflow
  • Audit your tools
  • Commit to the process

For brand and creative teams, the ideal solution to their creative workflow needs would include request intake, project management, online proofing, and a robust reporting suite. with unique challenges like these in mind, Lytho Workflow offers brand and creative teams all the features they need to support their agile process.
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Be sure to download the full guide for an example of building a business case.

 

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