Agile Marketing: How OpenView Uses Scrum

I’ve been at OpenView for five years now, and have been using Scrum-inspired planning since Day 1. For many people, that comes as a surprise. After all, we’re not a team of software developers — we’re a team of growth strategists, marketers, recruiters, and analysts focused on providing operating support to OpenView’s portfolio companies. But while we have had to adapt our own approach to Scrum and consistently iterate to improve its effectiveness, at it’s core, what we and what agile development teams are doing when we talk about Scrum is very much the same.

How Adopting Scrum Has Made All the Difference

The OpenView Labs team is made up of 15 full-time consultants who support 25 portfolio companies with sales, marketing, research, and recruiting. In addition, we also produce best practices content (eBooks, guides, articles, reports, webinars, etc.) designed to help any expansion-stage technology company (and build OpenView’s thought leadership brand in the process).
We’re not a large team, but we’re able to accomplish a lot. And the reason is we have a process in place to make us as productive as possible. We don’t have a choice — if we want to make a real, measurable impact with each of our investments we need to be relentlessly efficient.
Recently, I was asked to speak on how OpenView practices agile marketing by implementing Scrum at Boston’s Agile Marketing Chapter Meetup. The process of preparing for that presentation got me thinking about how grateful I am to have been introduced to Scrum. I say this with the utmost confidence — there is absolutely no way that we would be able to operative as effectively as we do without using this project management methodology.

Agile Marketing: 5 Keys to How Our Marketing Team Uses Scrum

You can access my full presentation here, but I thought I’d share six slides that explain the five core components of how our marketing team uses Scrum to manage ourselves and not just achieve but exceed our goals:

Want to Learn More About Scrum?

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