Releasing - who should communicate with marketing?
Currently we are planning to release a patch, but there is a discussion within our team.
Idea 1:
The PO signals: I want that patched. The dev team emails marketing: we want to release functionality X on date Y, could you please send an email to our customers about the downtime?
Idea 2:
The PO signals: I want that patched, he emails marketing: we want to release functionality X on date Y, could you please send an email to our customers about the downtime?
Both could work, just curious to hear what fits best with Scrum's ideaology.
About our organization: small, informal, well suited to Scrum. We have lunch at the same table as marketing, they work in the cubicles next to us.
One of the main ideas of Scrum, and agile in general, is to make things transparent and allow self-service to all stakeholders.
In practical terms this could probably mean having a wiki page updated with the details of each patch and have the marketing team subscribe to these updates.
Having said that, nothing can replace a real face to face interaction, so someone should go and talk to the marketing team about the patch, and it could either be a developer or a PO or maybe someone from the marketing team will initiate the discussion, it really doesn't matter as the team should self-organize when dealing with such action items (for example - decide on a Daily Scrum who is going to talk to the Marketing team), the important things is to make sure they DO self-organize :)
Since the Product Owner is accountable for the release of value, and for managing product stakeholder relationships, which of the ideas 1 and 2 you have suggested would seem to be more appropriate?
I would opt for idea # 2. The PO should be communicating with stakeholders and coordinating contact actions based on communication with the Scrum Team.
#2 Letting the PO/PM do the coordination work seems the way to go in traditional companies, however I lean towards #1:
As I understand it, the Dev team* should have the capabilities and is responsible for making and releasing the software. Making sure users are informed beforehand, to me, is a part of releasing, so the dev team should make sure it gets done.
While marketing is also a stakeholder (and should know what functionality is coming up, and accept it), in this case they need to do a task (send an email about downtime and new functionality), I would say they are a 'subcontractor' in this case (and arguably should be part of the dev team).
Boris, I really like your self-service idea, and the pragmatic attitude of your post. Just make sure it gets done!