In this episode, we’ll talk about how 3M is using Agile marketing, how they got started and how they overcame challenges like personnel changes.




























Frank Days  00:03
 I'm Frank Days here with Melissa Reeve, your hosts for today's episode. Joining us is Giannina Rachetta, Product Marketing Manager at 3M and an Agile marketing evangelist. Thanks for joining us today, Giannina.
 
Giannina Rachetta  00:36
Hi, Frank. Hi, Melissa. Thank you for having me.
 
Frank Days  00:39
Great. Well, in this episode, we'll talk about how 3M is using Agile marketing, how they got started, and how they overcame the challenges like personnel changes. Let's get started.
 
Melissa Reeve  00:53
Giannina, tell us about your journey to Agile marketing, did it start at 3M?
 
Giannina Rachetta  01:01
Melissa, kind of. It started previously, in 2015. Now that I think about it. I was gonna say 2014. And I looking back, you know, just looking personally, my background has always been in marketing. And I say it happens in the last probably 20 years doing marketing, I've always gravitated towards the software, technology company field.  And back in 2000, if you can believe that long, when I was working in marketing at a fast growing tech company in upstate New York, I actually watched how the development team at the time went from a waterfall approach over to adopting Agile methodologies and how they evolved that way. And it made total sense for me from a software development perspective. And again, in marketing, I've always been in the product marketing type of marketing, communications, product marketing, but always supporting software products. So I kind of had that in the back of my head. And then when I joined 3M in 2013, the division that I joined that I currently work in, produces software solutions for the Health Information Management, division, among other things, and from the get go, it was very clear that it was an Agile scrum team that I was joining. And, you know, right then and there, I knew I was gonna fit just fine. And part of my job in product marketing, I was very much involved in all the development teams, grooming sessions, sprint reviews, prioritization meetings, etc. So I was very familiar with the methodology from the software development side.  And now, you know, switching to agile marketing, it was really back in 2015, when I came across the really applying Agile to what I do, while I was doing some research on agile methods, and really through working on, you know, launching a product, there was a lot of coordination at the time, back and forth many stakeholders, presentations, updates, things we needed to produce out to the market, and things like that. And we we needed to work fast and independently, and we knew we knew what we needed to do, and have clear goals. So with a cross functional team of product owners, marketing, marketing, communications, advertising and all that, so we applied really very  rudimentary way of looking at what we were doing and kind of applying some Agile principles to it. And so, yeah, so I guess, really, from an agile marketing perspective at 3M That's kind of how I got started. I did a lot of self education.
 
Melissa Reeve  04:27
Yeah, it sounds like it it. Along the lines of education, what kind of support did you find?  You know,