51% of Marketing Teams Are Agile: Forrester Research

What to Read Next

1. Shoppers Have Low Tolerance for Errors in Holiday Ecommerce

2. Magnite Expands Audience Activation Solution to India, Southeast Asia

3. Jasper Launches AI Studio

4. Compulse Teams with Placements.io

Agile marketing consulting AgileSherpas in partnership with Forrester Research, have announced the results of the State of Agile Marketing Report. The annual report surveys hundreds of US marketers to measure their implementation of, and success with, Agile marketing.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated adoption plans for 38 per cent of the survey respondents. Yet, even in the face of urgent demand for adaptation, lack of training or knowledge about Agile approaches combined with a lack of talent to transform the team emerged as the largest hurdles preventing marketing departments from fully implementing an Agile approach.

“In a profession often marked by long hours, unrealistic expectations, and unsung heroism, the growing adoption of a framework that emphasizes sustainable pace and empowered teams is a beautiful thing,” said Andrea Fryrear, President and Co-Founder, AgileSherpas.

Here is what we learned from the report; 

• Total Agile marketing adoption jumped by ten percentage points this year to 51 per cent 
• Agile ways of working were found to be most prevalent in 
• Creative services, content creation, and operations (77 per cent)
• Demand and ABM (76 per cent)

• B2B marketing teams are the leaders in Agile adoption in 2021, with just over half (52 per cent) reporting use of Agile ways of working. Only 12 per cent of B2C teams, on the other hand, say they’re Agile.  
• As remote work exploded in 2020, marketers were far more likely to cite the importance of project management tools this year (55 per cent in 2020, compared to 39 per cent in 2019). 

• Agile marketers are the most likely to label themselves as satisfied with their work at 67 per cent. Traditional marketers are almost as satisfied: 63 per cent of them say their ways of working are satisfactory. Our poor Ad hoc marketers, however, report satisfaction one third as often as Agile marketers at just 21 per cent. 

That pesky “unplanned work” is the biggest fly in the Agile ointment. Coming in at a close second are non-Agile teams. The reality is that unplanned work isn’t going away, and marketers need to create (hybrid) frameworks designed to deal with this unavoidable challenge. Hybrid frameworks continue to be the preference of marketers, with an increase of 6 per cent points this year. Kanban and Scrum, however, both saw jumps in adoption as well, with 13 per cent fewer marketers identifying as Lean practitioners.