2 Ch we begin our work with them in the lobby (You see, we apt The Agile Marketing Methodology–EMC Style er tw promised the lobby was coming back in our story). If they o need our assistance with an ‘engagement’, we will work to EMC When business owners come to our ‘engagement’ office, we first hold a Business identify just whom from our ‘marketing house’ they require C orpor for their project. Objectives Meeting (BOM) with them. This is when we outline the objectives and at activities and identify all key stakeholders. We also check if they are really ready for e M the project. Because we are not going to bring everyone together to find out that the ark After that, we call every one of the stakeholders of that etin particular project, the business owners and all the business owners are nowhere near to delivering that core message we need to start g g the project. oe marketing experts –our ‘virtual’ team–together for one, big s agi meeting. The business owner only needs to tell his story We always try to begin with the basics. We avoid asking “what do you want” (a website, l e: our sonce. Everyone is in on it from the ground floor up and a folder, a white paper,…) because what business owners initially want is not always t the same as what they need. We dig a little and inquire about their objectives, their or people can decide about priorities, timing and additional y needs or opportunities together, in terms of the marketing target audience, their budget, their past marketing products,… We act as filters. Some- strategy and the clear outputs. This way we have addressed times we find out together that the specifics they had in mind initially should be the two business problems we described above. It becomes re-evaluated. That is why the BOMs are so crucial. a unified effort for the Corporate Marketing teams and a In the iterative planning meeting, we gather all the stakeholders in the same room. one stop shopping experience for the business owner. That way we ensure upfront participation and understanding for all. We act as advisors, asking pointed questions if things are not formulated clearly or suggesting things that seem to have been forgotten. As engagement manager we do not profess to be experts in ANY of the Corporate Marketing functions but we do act as advocates for all of them. 28 We want to make sure all the possible bases are covered by asking questions and challenging teams to think more broadly. At the end of the Iterative Planning meeting we, as a virtual team also define the sprint sets together, clearly stating the activity backlog, deliverables, participants and timelines. Unlike in agile software development, our standups are not conducted daily. We had