Can in-house agencies benefit from using Agile?  The answer is yes. Agile for Marketing, when done well, changes the game of marketing, and the dynamics of the organization. You may have listened to the Podcast by our clients at Insperity, where they explain how learning our brand of high-performance Agile brought their marketing services organization into a leadership position within the organization.  We're now happy to present the actual case study.

Why should Agile matter to marketing? Because the marketing function is one of the most chaotic functions in any organization. Agile was designed to solve a chaos problem — not the same one, but Agile can be adapted to fit the bill. We’ve seen a lot of feckless Agile in marketing organizations…people going through “Agile motions” without a lot of results.

Marketing chaos is really workflow chaos. This type of chaos is naturally-occuring and is driven by the shape of the work that the organization does. Check out this short list of the types of chaos found in a NOCO, the Naturally-Occurring Chaotic Organization.

But does Marketing need Agile? The answer is yes. In the Insperity case study, you’ll see some awesome themes of how the marketing organization, once it started taming its chaos, became more integrated with the rest of the organization, at times, “connecting the dots across the enterprise.”

Insperity, a $3.8bn publicly traded PEO (professional employer organization) services company. This case study explores the story of their 50+ person marketing organization and how well their marketing style of Agile is working.

“We’re able to operate at a much deeper level... bringing stakeholders in early to ensure we are aligned on results they need.” -Larry Shaffer, Senior Vice President Marketing & Business Development

“Our leadership’s mindset quickly changed from “Can we afford to do this?” to “We can’t afford not to do this.” - JaNette ConnellSenior Vice President, Corporate HR

These are just two of the many insights from the team at Insperity on how becoming an Agile organization has changed their business.

Can Agile work for Marketing? Yeah. Does Marketing need Agile? Hell, yeah. Read on.