How Red Olive Does Sprint Planning
As a digital marketing agency, planning and organizing projects in a timely and effective manner can seem overwhelming. From balancing time to assessing client’s individual needs, we’ve developed a different approach to agile sprint planning that helps our agency stay ahead of deadlines and accomplish goals set by clients and ourselves. Let’s discuss how a digital marketing agency can better serve their clients through an effective sprint planning process.
What is Sprint Planning?
Sprint planning is a framework used by marketing and software teams to define their work so they can efficiently complete each project in a set amount of time. In these meetings, teams meet to organize which member needs to do what, how much time it will take, and what collaborative effort the project needs.
Our Unique Approach to Sprint Planning
Since our founding in 1999, we’ve tried out plenty of different organizational tactics. While all of them helped, we’ve found that implementing an agile sprint planning process has yielded the best results for our clients and helped us keep our heads far above water during those overloaded weeks. The agile sprint planning framework is a streamlined approach to the usual sprint planning process.
During these agile sprint planning meetings, the marketing team breaks down individual projects into smaller, more digestible pieces so that each project progresses over time. It’s an approach that’s much more proficient than others because it moves projects as quickly as possible without letting items fall through the cracks. It also allows the marketing team to reassess strategies as time goes on.
Throughout our typical agile sprint planning meetings, strategists and project managers meet to discuss the projects they’re handling in-depth. They then discuss what each client needs, what needs to be accomplished overall, and what can be tackled that week to help them get closer to accomplishing that. What makes our process unique is that each client gets personal attention each week, so our team can understand how we can help them reach their goals faster and more efficiently. However, we’ve recently taken it a few steps further than that.
Complete Client Transparency from Day One
Lately, we’ve noticed that weekly planning still left much to be desired (for us and the client). That’s why we’ve started using an organizational program that gives clients a passageway into our marketing process. Each of our clients can look at the tasks we’ve planned for their product using an online set-up. So, whether a client wants to see what’s happening today, tomorrow, next week, or what goals have been set, everything about their project can be viewed and handled online. We’ve found that rather than waiting to discuss what’s been accomplished since our last meeting, clients can have an up-to-date view of what’s been accomplished and what we’re working on from their screen.
This approach has not only helped us stay on track but has also increased client communication and the client approval process by ten-fold. From daily tasks to weekly schedules, the client is able to approve tasks, see our workload, and understand what’s happening every single day making it easier to move projects along. It’s our newest approach that’s definitely here to stay.
Why Agile Works
Whether it’s managing a new client or tackling your team’s backlog, agile sprint planning gives your marketing agency the chance it needs. In an industry that’s competing in dynamic, global markets, marketing agencies now have the ability to be nimbler than the rest. By using smarter organization tactics like agile sprint planning, you’ll compete with rivals in an ever-changing marketplace. The agile approach gives you the edge you need and the transparency your client has always wanted, in a way that they never knew was possible.
Contact the team at Red Olive today and see how our approach to agile sprint planning can work for you.
