Measured Direction Podcast

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In this episode, we discuss taking an "Agile" approach to analytics! Who is taking on the risk in a stakeholder/team relationship? How can process mitigate this risk? What are we trying to accomplish in our work and can process make our work more efficient, more effective, more satisfying? We explore these questions in detail.

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Transcript

Jason Rose:
Hi, welcome, listeners, to the sixth episode of Measured Direction. I am Jason Rose, a content strategist here at Digital Surgeons, and I am joined by the leader of our analytics practice, Tom Miller. How's it going, Tom? It's great. How are you doing? Pretty good.

Jason Rose:
So measured direction is a for those of you that are listening for the first time is a listener driven podcasts for me.

Jason Rose:
And Tom answered questions from the audience related to digital marketing strategy and analytics. So you ready to hop right into the first question, Tom?

Tom Miller:
Let's do it. You want me to get started? Yeah, sure. So a question I get a lot and this isn't a single question that we're gonna start with is relates to working as a outsourced resource. Right. So in our case, as a consultant, but as a freelancer, et cetera. And the question I get is, is when you're when you're practicing analytics as an outsourced resource. How can you best onboard yourself into your client and your client's organization and into your client's data sets? Right. And, you know, I see this this. I've had this question asked of me over the years, literally, you know, tens of times. Right. And how can you best deal with the fact that you're an outsider? Typically going into an organization, you know, if you're working for a larger company, you're going into a probably highly matrix organization. The fact that you're working in some aspect of analytics means that you've a lot of different people with a lot of different motivations around the work that you're doing. Right. A lot of different stakes that they're holding. Right. When it comes to what it is that you're actually doing. So how can you best bring bring yourself in your practice and the people that you're working with as outsiders into the fold of whatever organization needs your help? And so, you know, this was largely this question said and this this problem, I guess, was largely the inspiration of a presentation I put together for the metrics conference very recently. But by the time we publish this, it'll be several months ago.

Jason Rose:
Ouch.

Tom Miller:
But a metrics in Chicago in late June of 2016 for people in the future that are listening to this. And what I talk about is digital surgeons. It's our company, our approach to managing our own process, our own work process, which falls under the broader sort of philosophical tenets of the agile approach. Right. So we're an agile shop and we have very specific ways that we approach our work, including onboarding. Right. That are inspired by the agile philosophy and in the principles of an agile, you know, work work methodology.

Tom Miller:
So we should probably take a step back for those. I mean, I'm sure a lot of listeners have heard of that job before. But let's talk a little about the roots. So more or less resonated from software development. Where are these? Well, are these developers came together and created 12 principles that they kind of deemed the agile manifesto. Yep.

Tom Miller:
So from there, it's kind of. So we've adopted a kind of interpretation of Agile that builds on this original manifesto and kind of a focus on creating your work and stories and two week sprints so that you kind of you focus on the outcomes of these two experience, that you kind of fail fast and fail quickly and then iterate. Yeah, it's like the whole of Lima startup and all the other kind of principles and the buzzwords that you hear coming out of Silicon Valley workflows. But I mean, it probably will help to just say what the 12 principles are.

Jason Rose:
Yeah, I mean, I understand. Let's take a step back.

Tom Miller:
So, yeah, I mean, the the there is a history of agile. And it was it did come out as software development rights of a group of software developers. And they were, you know, working within large organizations and they were really dissatisfied with how they were working together. Right. And so they came up with this manifesto. It is available, Agile Manifesto, dawg. And I think just, you know, to support the concept of agile and also to support the fact that we are you know, we have sort of built these processes off this from this route. I'm going to just read the manifesto. I think it is important to read it in its entirety just to sort of respect their original understanding of. Problem in their original approach to solving it. So I guess I'll just read it.

Tom Miller:
Why not? We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

Tom Miller:
Through this work, we have come to value individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration, over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan that is, while there is value in the items on the right. We value the items on the left more. So now you know, you and I and all the listeners at home are probably might be much better software developers. So, you know, I it is part of my practice, right. I've taken this manifesto and I, I just sort of molded it to be more about working with an Dejoy politics. Right. So the idea of like individuals and interactions over process and tools. That's that's really the sort of lasting theme. And I think it's I think it's like a lasting just general business and marketing theme that is that is sort of emerged from the 80s and 90s. You know, it's it's really about people overprocessed, particularly when you talk about the types of jobs that are the, you know, jobs which are intelligence based. Right. And, you know, when you talk about Dejoy politics, you sort of have these also these themes that have emerged from thought leadership. Right. Like the avalanche 90 10 rule is totally an individual, an interaction over process and a whole world focusing on users over session metrics or page level metrics as your KPI is.

Jason Rose:
Right. I mean, the the thought leadership has converged upon sort of this theme for a really long time. You know, I also think that actionable insight over comprehensive documentation for the second principle there are for the second leg there. You know, it's like how much are we thinking about doing analytics rather than how much? Or do we talk about actually doing analytics rather than actually doing it? How do we present? Are we presenting conclusions and actions or the work we did to get there? Right. What is what is the most important thing that we do? Right. Are we giving weather reports? Are we giving battle plans? Right. And that's that's sort of how you have to approach the work. Third big leg is business and analysts collaboration over contract negotiation. You know, how are we working together? Like, how are we connected together in our work? How how are analytics practitioners connecting to their business stakeholders? It's a hugely important thing. And it's not just, you know, that's not a one to one relationship. That's a one to many relationship that, you know, you can't be a successful analyst within an organization without yourself being matrixx at the same level that your organization is Matrix.

Tom Miller:
Right? I mean, nobody nobody can be successful as a digital analyst and sit in a silo, right? It just doesn't work out. You need to be you need to be as involved with the business as your stakeholders are, at least as aware of it. And then finally responding to change over following a plan. And, you know, I think that that is a hugely important one as well. It just speaks to, like, are you lower case a agile right. Are you able to adapt to an ever changing environment? And we all know, especially working on the digital side of things, that the environment changes really quickly and your business can be disrupted in a matter of days or weeks. And, you know, being able to respond to changes in that environment in a relatively rapid way is a competitive advantage for your business. So that's that's sort of like the the manifesto. Right. And sort of how I've interpreted the manifesto when it comes to my practice. But, you know, it's also applicable to a lot of the work that we do. Right. We as a collective here. Yes.

Jason Rose:
Do. I mean, I think the the last point you made is really a great Segway into how agile kind of translates into digital marketing in general. And yeah, absolutely. Why it's so effective that digital surgeons is the you know, marketing used to be much more static. Of course, as digital things change constantly of the creative content, very quickly adapt to ever changing customers. So it becomes very important that you have these. Kind of agile, cross-functional teams that can simultaneously adapt on the fly to whatever the trend is, whatever the technology need is, whatever the flavor of the week is, as it so often changes, you know? All it takes is Twitter changing something with their API and suddenly you have to massively change maybe couple activations you have. So, I mean, really, that's the first thing that comes to mind as we shifted digital surgeons, really, because we've always kind of been agile in the sense that we followed principles of the manifesto. But as we incorporate now more of the well, as much as agile favors individuals interactions over processes and tools. It does require, in our case, certain processes and tools that we implement in order to stick to the manifesto.

Jason Rose:
So as much as that sounds kind of counterintuitive, it really is how it kind of comes to life here. So, I mean, one of the main things, I think you briefly touched on this, but we can probably go a little bit deeper in. And it also helps when we talk about how you kind of onboard new clients. Right, is focusing on product over project scope. So instead of trying to explain the ADIZ of what you're going to do analytics wise, that's going to affect them, just show them what the outcome is. It's so-called, you know, baby. And so the bathwater, whatever old folksy thing you want to plug in there. So, I mean, speak a little bit more about that and why you feel it's so important to focus on the product scope and set of the projects go. Sure, sure.

Tom Miller:
So, you know, we we never I'll just sort of sprinkle these in throughout the course of our discussion. But, you know, one of the I believe it's a primary principle. Right. So, so agile sort of has this manifesto and then derive from the manifesto and derive from this. This theory of work. Are these principles and the principles give you a little bit more of a understanding of of how how if you're working in an agile way, how you want to be working. Right. So long winded, but the way the primary principle is that you're satisfying your stakeholders through early and continuous delivery. Right. And it's it's it's extremely delivery focused. You know, all of our agile process. And, you know, I think we'll get into some of them are really focused on your outcomes in your delivery. Right. And at the end of the day, when you're talking about analytics, you know, that's that's typically delivery of actionable insight or in some cases delivery of technologies or platforms to enable that insight. Right. So, yeah, I mean, you know, that's that's a that's a really important thing that you're aligning yourself to deliver. And, you know, I think that some people might be listening. Is me like. Well, of course. Like what? What else are you doing? But it's also an opportunity to step back in.

Tom Miller:
And we take this opportunity when we're, you know, developing our projects to step back and really say, what is it that we're doing? Right. I mean, we're very, very conscientious of describing the work that we're going to do. And we're also Cochi interests. And this is another agile principle about describing the work that we're not going to do. And it's sort of like almost like an Eastern philosophy. There's like a lot of Eastern philosophy stuff going on here, but it's like, how do you know what the work is that you're going to do without first understanding the work that you're not going to do? Right. So, yeah, I mean, you know, you're your primary goal is to satisfy your stakeholders through delivery. Another principle that is, you know, hugely important is that your primary measure of progress is that delivery. Right? So, you know, in the case of analytics, actual insights grabbed as a customer data is a primary measure of progress. So you're not you're not measuring yourself based on the amount of work that you're doing. Right. You're measuring yourself based on your what is coming out of that work. And I think that that's that's also a pretty important lens when you think about managing yourself and how your teams are managing themselves. Right.

Tom Miller:
It's like, as our founder pizzano always says, to focus on outcomes, not outputs. Right. I know. I'm certainly guilty of that. When, you know, Pete asked me how a Project CRC works on it or something I'm working on, my first instinct is always to say what I've done, not what the end product is.

Tom Miller:
So as much as it seems like common sense. I think people if you really start evaluating yourself hard, you'll realize that that's a natural tendency is to focus on the outputs that you're putting in, not exactly what the business outcomes are or just even the deliverables.

Jason Rose:
So let's talk a little bit about, you know, when it comes to working. You know, you mentioned cross-functional team before, which I think is an important aspect of how we work. But it to take a step back from that. Let's talk a little bit about the interactions that team members have with our process, because I think it's I think it's hugely. Hugely important, and I think it is a way that, you know, certainly my team, but but all of our teams here at DHS work together in a way that's that's pretty effective.

Tom Miller:
And I think this this sort of goes a little bit to the spirit of the question in that, you know, let's say you're an outsourced team, you know. In our case, we might be dealing with, you know, a large company that is large, big, highly matrix. Right. So we might have a, you know, somebody within a business unit that needs some analytical support. Right. Or some implementation support. They write up an RFP. Right. That RFP probably isn't that good to begin with. That RFP goes to their procurement department. The procurement department does whatever they need to do to it. They budgeted it out. They put it out. And then, you know, a, we might have or another agency might have a business development person.

Jason Rose:
That response, that RFP and they might respond to that RFP in a you know, we don't do this this way, but they might respond to of our fee in a generic way. Right.

Tom Miller:
And the team lead that actually, you know, and they when they RFP they win the business, then the team league gets a download of what the actual scope of work is from the business development person and the RFP. You know, and you can see that there's just this huge chain of custody issue with the actual requirements of the work being done that is really not satisfied by that process. Right. It's like the people actually doing the work get really far disconnected from from the business need of the work getting done. So how do we know? How do we approach that? How do we address that?

Tom Miller:
So we. Oh, good. Yeah, I was just going to say we avoid that game of telephone by using process is something we call road mapping to start with transparency so that business stakeholders are immediately connected with the team members, as you said, who are actually doing the work that they really they're not looked at as. Let's shelter them off in a corner and let the count people talk to the business stakeholders and press get everyone in a room at the same time and just kind of encourage through a process. Like I said, it's called roadmap thing, where we actually map out the stories and the deliverables that are going to be reached. And then, of course, to your point, before you also find out where the as much what you're not going to do as what you are going to do with something called a blue line, where you move stories on each side of that blue line, figuring out what fits into budget and how it can be scoped out, which is, of course, a whole nother animal itself to try to profitably scope projects.

Tom Miller:
Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, the the one of the fundamental difficulties in this this goes to everybody like this goes to everybody who works anywhere, is that people are just awful at estimating their own ability, not their own ability. But they're the time and effort that it takes to complete a project or a task. Right. Even even a subset, the most atomic level task of a project. People are just awful at estimating how much time that actually takes. Right. But yet to step back from what you were saying in one of the you know, one of these major principles of agile is collaboration. Right. So, you know, one of the the the actual principles is that business people and the people doing the work, which we refer to as the team, must work together daily. Right. So, you know, in in our case, my team's case, business people, technicians and analysts must work together daily. And that really goes to setting up how we scope projects and how we onboard clients. Right. So the concept here is that our team members. Right. So we've got teams that manage accounts. But we also have teams that actually do the work, whatever that work is. And we're bringing everybody together into a room face to face. And we are not just scoping projects, but onboarding clients. Right. So we are onboarding clients with what we call seven sheets exercise. Right. And what we're doing there is we're uncovering all of these key contexts that the team needs to develop their own work. Right. I mean, another huge principle of agile is that you build a project, you build projects around motivated individuals. Right. And you give them the environment and support that they need. Trust them to get the job done right. Another principle is that face to face conversation is the most effective method of conveying information in the most efficient, right.

Tom Miller:
I mean, that all fits right back into the seven sheets exercise. You know, just to really make clear. So the seven sheets are going to be business, context, purpose and goals, critical behaviors, the platform and approach, open issues, risks and done this. So the way that kind of exercise gets, you know, actually how it works.

Jason Rose:
So those seven sheets get put up in a room and we literally hang out, literally hang up 17 sheets, all that, she said.

Tom Miller:
And we all whip out Sharpies. And normally these seven things might be something that's typically covered in the RFP that goes through the procurement department that goes to maybe the account signed.

Tom Miller:
Yeah. I mean, even the best written RFP gets you like 15 to 20 percent. It's the team, right? I mean, this is this is all focused on the people actually doing the production work. So that gets the team. I mean, the best RFP I've ever seen maybe gets you to 20 percent of the actual understanding that they need to effectively execute that task. I mean, unless it's like a really simple task. But I'm referring to, like on a project that involves like multiple people over multiple weeks to accomplish.

Tom Miller:
So there's seven sheets and replace that RFP that probably doesn't have everything that the people on the team working on the project need in the first place. Right. But then it gets pushed through that game of telephone. And instead of that, these seven sheets are up and the team themselves works to answer these questions. And the account person who is most closely connected to the business stakeholder, they don't just run the meeting and fill in these sheets themselves. They're more or less they're too moderate and ask the team to fill in these sheets and to come up with the solutions. And then you bring the client in and you go through the whole seven sheets together so that everybody's on board and on the same page as early as possible in the process.

Tom Miller:
Then in the ultimate outcome of the seven sheets exercise is to provide. You know. I know, I know sheet. The first sheet is called the business contact sheet. But really what the seven sheets do is they provide the business context that the team needs to organize their work and to develop their own scope of work.

Jason Rose:
Right. And to really understand what it is that they are making or doing. Right.

Tom Miller:
So use like a very, very granular, easy digital marketing example. Sure.

Jason Rose:
Say we're working with a brand on their social calendar. OK. And I'm a designer who is designing social assets. And there's a seven sheets exercise done for our social campaign and whatever the activation looks like. So the end result of this is now I'm designing this and I understand the greater business context behind what's informing my designs instead of I just have maybe my account manager on the works say, hey, we need a June 15th asset.

Tom Miller:
Right. So, I mean, it's it's just a very simple way of kind of applying this to now the person doing the work understands much more around why they're doing it than just getting handed something across their desk.

Tom Miller:
Yeah. And, you know, and part of the idea here in, you know, sort of probably one of the final principles I want to touch on is that all of these all of these processes. Right. And the processes are really you know, they're totally fungible. Right. The way that we practice agile to be completely different than the way another organization. That's right. But, you know, I think one of the more important things, one of the more important principles is that everyone involved in the project. Right.

Tom Miller:
Or everyone involved in the work should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. Right. And I think one of the things.

Jason Rose:
So, you know, if I could put that another way, a normal work day or a normal work week is a highly productive work week. However, you define either those things right and, you know, you should be able to be at a high level of productivity indefinitely, just working normally. However, you define that.

Tom Miller:
And I think the e you know, the point here with the seven sheets exercise is to really it's really our first pass at being able to identify those potential issues like a project is, you know, a timeline is is too optimistic. Right. Or a project scope. The actual work involved to deliver that is too optimistic. Right. Or too pessimistic that too optimistic. And so the idea here is that what we want to avoid as an organization is what's called a death march. Right. We want to avoid that sense that there is an ever growing amount of work to be done. The closer we get to the actual project deadline. Right. I've been involved in a lot of organizations and in a lot of projects where that has. That was not the case. Right.

Tom Miller:
I think like the most notorious one is I worked on a Web sort of redesign project in like 2008 with a company, and it was 2006, but it was a very large scale, multimillion dollar large company was basically bringing their business online.

Tom Miller:
And, you know, we had an outside agency, we had an internal team, and the project was so off kilter that we had to work 12 hour days, six days a week. And then Sunday's was our easy day. And we had to work eight hours for like an entire summer for like four straight months. And we had, you know, breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day at the office. Right. It's like I literally did not leave the office. And, you know, I could go into doing more like I I lived in D.C. at the time and I'd get out of work at like 9:00 p.m. every night. And all I wanted to do was get across town to my house. And it was so late that I'd walked down into the metro station and I'd pay I'd pay like three bucks or whatever to get in the metro station. And I'd see the little sign that said, like when the next train was coming and it was always like 17 or 18 minutes.

Tom Miller:
And I can't tell you how defeating that is right now, literally, just like turn around and, like, go back up the escalator and get a cab or just walk home. Charlie Brown, look at like the empty metro station at nine o'clock at night. And I like sad clothes, you know, having worked a twelve hour day.

Tom Miller:
And I also I also did a little math at the end of my tenure at this at the end of my life seemed to be ended tenure at this job. And I figured that during that summer, the summer of like 07 or whatever, I made like seventeen dollars an hour, swear to God. That's how much money I have now. And that doesn't like, you know, factor overtime or whatever. And I was like, wow. Like, I, you know, I sat down at the Internet. I was like, wow, I really made some really poor, like, career life decisions. Like I should be like seventy dollars an hour. I like I could make a ton more money waiting tables or if I were willing to wait tables for like 90 hours a week, which is what I was willing to work at this job for. So, you know, those death marches happened. Right. And I feel like as as an outsourced resource, we are more vulnerable to that than in sourced team. Right. And part of the reason is that, you know, our clients are expecting us, as they should to deliver something very specific. And it's really up to us to decide how we do the work. Right. And I think that outside agencies have a little bit of risk when it comes to, you know, this concept of death marches. Right. And we also have this concept of the firefighter. Right. And the problem is, is that when these projects go off kilter, you always have somebody that comes along and they're the hero. Right. They're like the most competent or most efficient worker. And they come along and save the project. Right. And, you know, the problem with that is you become reliant on the firefighter to come in and save the day. Every single time. Right. And you also become overly reliant as an outsourced company on having a firefighter or two on staff. Right. And it's like, what happens if the firefighter leaves? Right. So, you know, obviously we want to be focused on our clients outcomes. But to do that, we also need to be focused on how it is that we're working.

Tom Miller:
Yeah. So that's ultimately why a certain amount of tools and processes do end up giving you put into the process instead of just a blind. Let's do sprints and, you know, working cross-functional teams. There does have to be some kind of constraints and rigidity around it in order to keep the firefighter from always saving projects, other problems that, you know, the death marches that come up and everything else.

Tom Miller:
So, I mean, that's that's the that's like a kind of a long winded answer. But I think it's I think it's the answer. Right. It's an it's an answer. Right. So I've worked in a lot of different companies with a lot of different project management methodology. I mean, the end of the day, that's sort of what we're talking about here. And we are talking about a philosophy and like a connectedness with your team and a connected ness with your organization. And. Really, perhaps most importantly, a much greater connectedness with your client. Right. In our case. But, you know, at the end of the day, this is a project management and a process management infrastructure that we've adopted. Right. You know, I don't know if we want to talk a little bit more about these structures, but, you know, I mean, I guess the whole point of operating the way that we operate is that we develop you know, we develop a we have a collaborative way of developing our work and we're very, very mindful of how we work and how we work together and how we work individually. And there's a great deal of visibility. There's a great deal of accountability, and there's a great deal of collaboration in how we approach our work. And it's generally POG very positive.

Tom Miller:
So, yeah, yeah, I really have, you know, a long winded way of answering.

Tom Miller:
The question is, you know, how do you onboard new clients? It's like, well, you do it very thoughtfully. You do it with team collaboration as one of the more important things. When I say team collaboration, I mean, you're bringing in the people that are doing the actual work and having them understand the context and scope, the work themselves. Right. Scope the product that they're delivering and the project that they're actually executing themselves in. That's that's really the short answer to the long answer.

Jason Rose:
But the I think the agile principle that most kind of fits into what you're just talking about is really at the end of the day, you unprovided and fire the environment and the support and the trust that's needed to get the job done. Yeah. So something we talk about a lot when we were kind of, you know, onboarding agile ourselves, that our agency was just having empathy today for both sides of understanding that the risk the client is taking on. Yeah. Understanding the risk that your own team is taking on and really just trying to always flatten the room as much as possible and get people talking to each other face to face to really best understand and have empathy for everyone you're working with. So it's a kind of a copout to say, you know, how do you best onboard? Clients have empathy.

Jason Rose:
But really, at the end of the day, a lot of this centers around just ways to create shared understanding.

Tom Miller:
So, you know, I think you I think you bring up a really good point. Like, I think that when it comes to outsourcing work. Right. As somebody that is within an organization that can't insource work. Right. Which is problematic in and of itself, but it's a present day reality, particularly, I mean, with most digital marketing work. Right. But it's certainly a very present reality in analytics work. Right. Digital analytics work. It's like you're almost forced to outsource because there's no talent in the talent marketplace. Right. So what you're doing within those organizations that I've been this person within the organization is when you bring on an external resource, you're taking on a ton of risk. Right. You are putting budget out. And if if you are outsourcing a critical project, if that project fails or is challenged in certain ways, that's a huge career setback for you. Right. I mean, you have potential to not get a bonus, not get a promotion, you know, depending on how high up in your organization you are.

Tom Miller:
You know, it's really risk to your career in, you know, the varying degrees that you really don't need to take on. Right. And I, I, I totally agree with what your assessment is. There's there's a great deal of empathy at play here with this as well. And, you know, one of the things that we tried to do is we try to mitigate and lessen that risk to the individual in that position. In the way that we do that is that we are, you know, again, developing a full understanding of the business context and allowing the people that are doing the work to have full transparency with the business.

Tom Miller:
Right. With the with the organization we're working with. And, you know, allow the people that are actually doing the work to create the work itself in the way that the work is being done. So, you know, we have more accountability to individual team members, which gives our organization as a whole more accountability and visibility as well. So I like that aspect as well. But I think that's a great point. Empathy is, you know, that's a core value of our or our organization as a whole. And this this process certainly fits into that in a big way.

Jason Rose:
Yeah, like I said, we already kind of really we were already incorporating. We're putting so many elements of the Agile manifesto that once we really onboard the Agile as our de facto workflow and then every project has to run this way, it really went relatively smoothly. We have those it really fits into a lot of the values and the kind of startup mentality that we already have in play here.

Tom Miller:
Great. Well, I mean, I think that's plenty of time. Plenty of talk about agile.

Jason Rose:
All right, great. So that was the sixth episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it. You shot that six. I think that's six. So. So we're off the air. So when did we start? February. Must've been February. So we once.

Jason Rose:
I don't want to do the math and find out how frequent over like it were faster than once a month. Yeah. That's not bad. I mean, our plan is to do this every two weeks. But it's it's difficult. Yeah. Especially in the summer. Admittedly, it's been a it's been crazy as always. But anyway, thank you for listening.

Tom Miller:
If you have a question, please submit it to Bitly by t dot l y slash measured direction.

Jason Rose:
Yeah. You can also use the hashtag measure. Direxion, if you want to submit a question on Twitter and follow me on Twitter.@@