Slides from SMX West presentation. Covers in-house SEO, project management, Agile methodology, maturity model for Agile adoption, and how to execute on Agile internally. Follow me at @davelloyd1

1. SMX - Agile Marketing - Dec 13, 2012
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.

2. Global team delivering Organic & Site Search
strategies for all Adobe products
Team charter
• Deliver industry best practices
• Drive KPI-focused results
• Align with Marketing Cloud product teams
Dave Lloyd @davelloyd1
Senior Manager, Global Search Marketing
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 2

3. "Business has only two
basic functions: marketing
and innovation.“ – Peter
Drucker
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 3

4. Learning Organizations  Agile
http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html (2001)
“The only sustainable competitive
advantage is your organization’s
ability to learn faster than the
competition.” Peter Senge, The
Fifth Discipline, 1990 2004
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 4

5. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
Over time, all systems naturally move toward chaos.
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 5

6. Optimize team focus to SEO signals
SEO Algorithm Team Priorities
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.

7. Challenging of adapting quickly
Adapt to Adapt with
Penguin Authorship Big Data Countless Plug-Ins
Panda Knowledge Graph Adobe Analytics SEO Dashboards
(BrightEdge,
Schema.org Canonical Google Analytics
Conductor, Covario,
Google+ Not Provided SEOMoz Search Metrics)
Href Alt Lang Digital Customers Majestic
ScreamingFrog
Adapt how
Smarter thinking
More resources
Learning faster
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 7

8. Common Pain Points in Organizations
Don’t know the
strategy
Not improving Not moving fast
efficiency enough
Not aligned and
on the same page
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 8

9. Agile is a proven & repeatable process over 12 years
Being Customer Centric
INSPIRES Product Vision &
Sustainable Project Plan
Sprint Learnings & Quick Fixes
Immediate Gratification Project Plan REQUIRES
Customer Feedback Agile-aligned Lean
INFORM next Sprint Limit Big Problems
Teams
deliverables Always be WIPing
Teams EXECUTE &
ITERATE on simple,
short, and incremental
Sprints (2 weeks)
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 9

10. Maturity model for Agile Marketing adoption
Modified Agile Agile Methodology + Scrum
• Weekly Scrum meetings • Full stakeholder alignment
• Consistent Sprints
• ScrumMaster leads daily stand-ups
• Shared accountability
• Customer feedback loop
• Optional daily stand-ups
• Optional user stories
Basic Project Management Integrated Project Management
• Clear goals • Shared ownership & KPIs
• Defined owners • Regular meetings
• Agreed on deliverable dates • Getting Things Done mentality
between groups
Stakeholder Commitment
Loose Firm
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 10

11. Our Basic Methodology
Twice-weekly “stand up” meetings Benefits
1. what you did? • Adaptable
2. what you’re doing? • Collaborative
3. challenges? • Accountable
• Organized
• Celebrate Quick
Wins Weekly
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.

12. #1: Quarterly Project Planning (Be Agile or Be Tactical)
CHALLENGE
 200+ major projects on the SEO team’s project list
 Difficult to determine which projects are a priority
 High task & people dependency
 Multiple tools being used to manage projects within the same team
SOLUTION
 Quarterly half-day planning meetings – to prioritize projects
 Weekly Sprint planning meetings – to discuss tasks completed, next steps, obstacles
 Standardized project templates for large SEO projects
 Usage of project management tools (i.e. Acrobat.com, AtTask)
BENEFITS
 Completed 183 projects based on Revenue Impact & Team Priority
 Easier to justify project priority with Stakeholders
 Management insight into timeline & resource management
 Quicker project planning – due to standardized project planning templates & tools
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 12

13. #2: Domain Migration (Be Agile or Be Overwhelmed)
CHALLENGE
 Executive Directive
 Migrate 15 Acquired-Company Domains
 6 Months
SOLUTION
 Dedicated cross-functional team
 Sprints every 2 weeks
 Continued learning & agility
 Used shared real-time platform (Acrobat.com)
BENEFITS
 Every SEO best practice incorporated
 Aligned to CEO & CMO vision
 On time & under budget
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 13

14. #3: Product Launch Planning (Be Agile or Be Behind)
CHALLENGE
 Product Launch
 73 unique SEO projects
SOLUTION
 List and categorize all projects
 Prioritize projects (each team member prioritizes by assigning a 1, 2, or 3)
 Revenue Impact (each team member has input into each project – High, Med, Low)
 Impact (each team member categorizes each project by Impact – High, Med, Low)
 Each project categorized by size (i.e. XL, L, M, S)
 Assign Owners & Completion Date to each project
 Highest prioritized projects are transferred into smaller project plans.
These are broken into tasks that are reviewed in weekly sprint planning meetings
BENEFITS
 Hyper-responsive to frequent content updates & review cycles
 Excellent results aligned to BU goals
 Retrospective/Post-Mortem – what worked, what didn’t, what’s applicable to future
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 14

15. Project Planning using AtTask
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 15

16. Watch out for…
Perfection or over-complicating
 It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to get started
 Be sophisticated with recommendations. Execute on doable tasks
DO NOT boil the organizational ocean
 Execute first on your team – stakeholder alignment is not critical at first
Ineffective process
 Must have: 1. Weekly Scrum meeting & 2. Projects have a 2 week deadline
 Daily stand-up - critical for complete visibility, not always realistic
Constant sprinting without a pause every 2 weeks
 Otherwise the pace is not sustainable
Scope creep
 New requests & requirements added to the bottom of the queue for reconsideration
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 16

17. Meet someone new
1 minute each
2 minutes
What’s keeping you from
using Agile in your org?
End
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.

18. Resources
http://www.slideshare.net/jcolman/agile-marketing-4-principles-and-13-hacks-
seomoz-mozcon-2012
http://chiefmartec.com/2012/06/everything-is-marketing-everyone-must-be-
agile/
http://blogs.gartner.com/jake-sorofman/is-agile-the-last-remaining-
competitive-advantage/
http://blogs.gartner.com/jake-sorofman/agile-isnt-just-for-geeks-anymore/
http://searchengineland.com/have-you-adopted-agile-marketing-yet-2-127247
http://www.customerthink.com/blog/everything_is_marketing_everyone_must
_be_agile
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 18

19. White Paper – Valtech & Adobe
Principles of Agile apply
to any discipline that
operates in conditions of
complexity, uncertainty
and change.
5 years from now, Agile
will broadly influence
Marketing departments
http://www.valtech.com/agile-marketing-new-imperative
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.

20. Key Takeaways
Commit to overcome
Entropy of your projects
Innovate & start on yourself first with
Agile principles - then immediate team
Carve out time with team to generate a
thorough shared project list
Filter on Team-driven AND Revenue-
focused priorities
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 20

21. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.

22. Thank you!
Dave Lloyd
@davelloyd1
slideshare.net/dalloyd
Senior Manager, Global Search Marketing
© 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 22

23. © 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.