1 Ch We too, at EMC, use such connectors in our agile marketing It is all about creating bridges between departments, branches, employees, projects and apt er one story, as you will learn in the next chapter. We work with partners. It is about connected collaboration. Between business and marketing. Between Engagement Managers that bridge the gaps between marketing and IT. And between our ultra-specialized experts that need to work together like M ark the business owners in our company and our numerous, closely knit guerrilla groups and combine their talents. etin slightly siloed marketing sub-departments. g in the moment Markets are disappearing, The agile - 1.2 C becoming networks of Agile marketing is so serious about collaboration that collaboration it streamlines it by means of a methodology, that the o l information with the l abor method development world calls ‘Scrum’. This agile software at customer at their heart. e! And if the outside world development framework has a strong focus on team unity, face-to-face communication and customers. It becomes a network, is well suited for projects with rapidly changing or highly emergent requirements. In other Peter companies will have to Hinssen words, perfect for a marketing environment. follow suit. IT thought leader and author How Scrum works Surprisingly though, many of our marketing departments are still built in a very top-down and stovepiped manner. The process starts with a project backlog. This is a well-defined list of tasks requested 20 by the business owner or developed by the team to achieve their goals. It evolves Collaboration for them is just passing a finished piece of via a series of short iterations called sprints, which last from one to four weeks. Each ‘product’ on to the next one, with very little communication sprint begins with a brief planning meeting and concludes with a review. or interaction between all the separate players. They afford very few connections to their fellow employees of other During the Sprint Planning meeting, the team reviews the project backlog and agrees departments. Agile marketing can help solve that problem. upon the tasks to be accomplished during the current sprint. During the entire sprint,