Process is King: How successful marketers get their work done

In a recent survey from Workfront, only 15% of marketers say they consider themselves “very organized.” For the majority of marketers (57%), work processes range from “some days are good, some days are bad” at best to “very disorganized” at worst.

The last thing many marketers want to think about is process. When asked whether they use an Agile methodology to manage their work, 30% said yes, 38% said no, and 32% didn’t know.

And yet thinking about process (and actually knowing which methodology you use) may be the only way to stay relevant in today’s seismic marketing world,

A Methodology for Your Madness

Work processes fall into three broad categories, with a variety of specific approaches and tools beneath each umbrella. Here are the terms you need to know:

1. Waterfall: This is the traditional, sequential method that most people in most industries follow by default. You make a plan, you follow the plan, you release the resulting product, you evaluate how it went, you start over. In our survey, 26% of marketers adhere to Waterfall-like processes.

2. Agile: Born in the software development industry, Agile takes a more flexible, team-based approach to work management. Large projects are broken down into small chunks, or “stories.” Each week, the team picks a certain number of stories to work on, and they complete the “plan-execute-release-evaluate” cycle on all of those stories by the end of the week. The shorter cycles and constant evaluation inspire a spirit of responsiveness and flexibility that tend to permeate the entire work culture. In our survey, 41% of marketers say they’re either using Agile now or plan to in the next 4 years.

3. Mixed: Marketers who are not purely Waterfall or purely Agile tend to follow a mixed approach—a hefty dose of traditional sequential processes, with a splash of Agile (maybe stand-up meetings or a burndown chart) to keep things interesting. About 40% of marketers in our survey fall into this category.

The Future is Agile

As the stats above show, familiarity with Agile marketing is on the rise, as are adoption rates. But we’re far from reaching any kind of tipping point, which is not surprising given that the manifesto was penned just four years ago, in 2012.

“I think Agile Marketing methodologies and approaches are going to be more and more important as customer expectations continue to evolve to demand real-time, personalized messaging,” Fryrear continued in her interview with Staples. “The only way we’re going to be able to do that is through adopting an Agile approach.”

Another Agile expert, Scott Brinker, took Fryrear’s prediction a step further when he recently said: “Agile marketing isn't just a nice to have; it's the only way an organization has a prayer of executing at the speed the market demands.”

Strong words. But this much is certainly true: staying competitive depends not just on the work you do, but how you get it done. The complexity and speed of marketing work are just going to keep increasing, and successful teams will be those that have the right processes in place. Even if you don’t adopt processes that are “Agile with a capital A,” they have to be agile enough for your team to be responsive to continuous customer feedback, rapidly changing market conditions, and emerging global trends.

Strong words. But this much is certainly true: staying competitive depends not just on the work you do, but how you get it done. The complexity and speed of marketing work are just going to keep increasing, and successful teams will be those that have the right processes in place. Even if you don’t adopt processes that are “Agile with a capital A,” they have to be agile enough for your team to be responsive to continuous customer feedback, rapidly changing market conditions, and emerging global trends.

Jada Balster, Marketing Director, Workfront.