Working on the web in a team can be difficult. Sometimes you are required to deliver on large projects, such as a new feature or offer; and the rest of the time, you are doing service delivery; update a page, add a new blog post etc.. How do you reconcile both? What is the best way to run a web team for Internet Marketing today?
Scrum
SCRUM has been around since the Agile Manifesto in 2001. It is a project management technique built around different ceremonies (meetings). The best known of these is the daily standup. A fifteen minute meeting early every day to remove blockers. Another important piece of SCRUM is the concept of a Sprint. A Sprint is where a block of time, usually 2 weeks, is set aside to work through the tasks in the project.
To get the most out of a Sprint all dependencies should be met before starting. The person working on the Sprint should be able to dedicate their time exclusively to the Sprint. This can be difficult in small teams as specialities arise within the team. For example, one of your developers could also be the technical SEO expert. If an issue arises on the website, the expert may have to be pulled out of the Sprint, negating the advantages of running SCRUM.
SCRUM is the best way of efficiently getting a project completed. However, there are not many teams that can lock themselves away for 2 week stretches, especially if the web team reports into a faster paced business unit, like marketing.
Service Queue
So what happens when the marketing team needs to launch their campaign now, not in 2 weeks?
This is where the Service Queue comes in. Tasks are added to the queue and someone on the team is set aside in order to have the capacity to work on the queue. This means that if anything is really urgent it can be worked on straight away.
By combining SCRUM and the service queue, it allows you to give a predictable timeline for projects using SCRUM while the service queue gives you the capability to look after your stakeholders with speed and agility.