Capital Group Content Workflow
Tailoring Agile to reframe the work and enable productivity.
Capital Group, a leading American financial services firm recently put their digital content publishing into overdrive. But there was a problem - they were consistently missing deadlines or spinning on projects using their existing workflow, haphazardly using “Agile/Scrum” even though it did not suit their needs. The operation was bottlenecked in the publishing phase in ways that could be resolved throughout the creative process. I audited the full work cycle and proposed a Kanban-centric work methodology that respected the department culture while meeting the needs of the team
Capital Group’s creative team publishes online educational and marketing content for a variety of audiences. The team is structured into creative “pods,” each one functioning as a self-sufficient unit staffed with members responsible for the entire content creation process. Each pod is comprised of financial writers, copy editors, digital designers, project managers, and marketing managers.
The pods were originally using Agile/Scrum to manage their work in sprints, however it simply didn’t suit their needs. Unlike a software development team which can calculate story points, velocity and typically complete a ticket in a single sprint of 2-4 weeks, pods were spending many months on a single ticket, bouncing it between writers, editors and designers at the end of each sprint, all without visibility or process accuracy in JIRA. A great many pods abandoned the Agile/Scrum method altogether out of frustration.
I proposed and implemented a customized Agile Kanban methodology for the pods. Kanban visualizes work more effectively as it shuffles between disciplines. Moreover, Kanban does not prescribe a sprint duration within which the work must be completed. A weekly meeting enabled team members to move tickets around and get visibility into progress.
The adoption of Kanban was well-received, yielding some major improvements such as faster work turnaround, improved team communication, better project visibility to senior leadership, more accurate load balancing within the pods and tangible metrics for staffing needs.