Agile workflows simplified through a platform built for collaboration

In the 21st century digital marketing landscape, flexibility is crucial. The more flexibility a brand or an organization has, the better it can serve the digital content needs of its customers. However, delivering flexibility isn’t just about pushing out daily content to keep people engaged, it’s about reacting to challenges, seizing opportunities to innovate, and fine-tuning products to meet rapidly changing expectations. 

For example, did you know that over 70% of customers expect personalization from the brands and businesses they choose? That expectation gets more challenging when you factor in the increasing number of channels that customers use to interact with brands — web, mobile, wearable, GenAI, voice interface, in-store signage, and so on. In that climate, creating a cohesive, personalized journey requires an agile team and a flexible, scalable content platform. 

But the way we work can significantly influence the amount of flexibility we have when shaping content experiences for our customers. In this environment, it's the agility of individual teams that makes a difference at every stage of content production — and to the quality of the digital experiences that customers receive. 

In fact, the value of workflow agility extends across an entire organization. It makes it easier for cross-functional teams to collaborate on value-adding technical and strategic tasks which, in turn, make it easier to write, design, and edit blogs, graphics, and other content pieces that reach audiences, boost conversions, and drive growth. 

In this post, we’re going to explore the agile methodology of work — in other words, the value of organizing internal infrastructure to allow teams to work on projects independently, and in parallel, in order to get products, services, and content to market faster.

Let’s dive into the details of agile workflows. 

What is an agile workflow?

The term “agile,” as it relates to workflows and project management, first entered the lexicon as part of the Agile Alliance’s Manifesto for Agile Software Development in 2001. Where the more traditional “waterfall” approach to the software development workflow was precipitous, requiring one task to be complete before another began, the agile software development methodology brought speed and flexibility to organizational processes — which got digital products to market faster. 

But, what makes a workflow agile?

Essentially, an agile workflow focuses on identifying the tasks within a project that can be executed independently of other tasks, or without waiting for upstream tasks to be completed, and then having teams to work on them in parallel. 

By adopting an agile approach, teams can focus not only on value-adding work, but on making as much progress as possible before a dependency, such as a review by another department, becomes necessary. 

In an agile workflow, rather than working from start to completion as one continuous process, work requirements are broken down into incremental durations, which are referred to as “sprints.” A sprint typically lasts for two weeks, after which employees check in with supervisors and other teams, provide feedback on their progress, review, and fine-tune their work where necessary.

Of course, it’s not enough to simply declare that you’re going to be adopting an agile approach. You’ll need to ensure that everyone in the organization is on the same page in your project management playbook, and, critically, have a suitable agile tech infrastructure in place to facilitate agility across every task.   

The value of agility

Agile teams are independent, efficient, and cross-functional groups of individuals that are focused on proving value as quickly as possible.  

The agile methodology is a philosophy of working that aligns with the needs of modern organizations because it allows technical and nontechnical stakeholders to work in parallel on the same project, without predicating their work on the progress of the other.

Agility and digital content marketing

In digital marketing contexts, agility increases the ability of every team to meet customer demand for highly personalized experiences, across a huge variety of channels. While developers focus on high value technical tasks that facilitate the new experiences for customers, marketers can create, test, and iterate on personalized customer journeys that drive engagement. 

The Contentful digital experience platform, for example, is designed for exactly this kind of agile marketing work. Since the platform’s content management system (CMS) is headless, and leverages application programming interfaces (APIs) for communication between services, there’s no risk of coding complications when nontechnical teams use it. Developers are free to build out a backend tech stack with modular apps and services, and, at the same time, marketing and content teams are free to complete content work in the front end in a completely code-agnostic CMS. 

That means marketers can spin up new pages, new campaigns, and any other kind of new content experience quickly, and push that content out to any channel in their digital infrastructure without any need for developer intervention. Brands are pushing this even further with the integration of AI personalization and experimentation tools. Marketers can access and use these tools as part of their content workflows, and, since they don’t have any developer dependencies, use them to create, test, and launch highly personalized, data-driven experiences faster than ever.  

The benefits of agile workflow 

Let’s look a little more closely at the benefits of agile practices.  

Speed to market

Agile workflows are designed to eliminate the dependencies and bottlenecks that define linear, waterfall workflows. With projects broken down into incremental sprints, agile teams can identify and complete specific project tasks, organized by priority, respond quickly to emerging challenges, new feedback, or new market opportunities, and push products towards launch faster. 

Access for nontechnical users

Agile workflows are implemented with usability and access in mind so that marketers, content creators, and other nontechnical users can work on projects without having to rely on the progress or expertise of technical teams. Freed from their dependency on developer counterparts, nontechnical, agile team members can progress specific tasks, and respond to specific market challenges and customer requests, in real time. 

Fewer dependencies

Agility means that project teams don’t need to wait for other teams or stakeholders to complete their own assignments before beginning theirs. This means that they can operate with less friction, less need for internal review, and less potential for delay — which facilitates collective progress.  

Improved collaboration

Agile project management is more than just a procedural technique, it encourages a mindset shift in everyone involved in a project. While there’s a strong focus on team independence and autonomy, stakeholders must also learn to collaborate in an agile environment, supporting their work with clear communication, accountability, and regular check-ins that maintain alignment across departments. That iterative approach represents a foundation for a culture of continuous improvement.

Customer experience 

Agile workflows are implemented around a cycle of iteration and feedback rather than a linear “start to finish” progression which gauges success at completion. In an agile workflow, teams can react to market challenges and opportunities, and integrate new data and knowledge continuously. The result is a more personalized product or service, finely tuned to customer expectations and needs. 

Business value

The individual factors listed above feed into a significant collective benefit — that is, the long-term business value that agile work adds to an organization. Individual team members that form part of an agile workflow are typically tasked with some critical key performance indicators (KPIs), such as making or saving money, or reducing risk, and, as agile work shortens production time, increases the impact of marketing, and adds other efficiencies, it becomes easier for them to deliver on those metrics. 

For an example of that kind of value-adding benefit working in action, check out Contentful partner Docusign’s journey to speed up its content publication workflow — which reduced weeks to minutes following Contentful implementation.  

Traditional and agile workflows

Let’s review how agile workflows differ from traditional, linear workflows. 

Agile experimentation and personalization in action

One of the defining characteristics of the agile methodology, and one that sets it apart from traditional work is its value for experimentation and personalization. The characteristics listed above align well with digital experimentation and personalization strategies, in which businesses attempt to enhance their content offering by asking three questions: Is my content good? How do I get my good content to the right audience? And how do I know it's working?

In an agile workflow, content teams can create a feedback loop that answers those questions, and then iterate on their content, refining and optimizing it with digital experimentation tools — which are also available through Contentful. 

For an example of how agile work supports experimentation and personalization, let’s look at another Contentful partner: Ruggable. By adopting agile work, with support from Contentful, Ruggable was able to roll out a successful A/B testing strategy with a team of only two people and use the results to implement an optimized personalized content experience for its customers. Those personalization efforts boosted Ruggable’s conversion rates by around 25%. 

Managing resistance to agile workflows

While the benefits may be clear, certain organizations may face resistance to the implementation of agile work. Let’s look at some of the reasons why. 

Lack of change management

Agile workflows can represent a huge change for companies that have previously relied on linear development. Some teams may feel the shift to an agile approach hasn’t been properly mapped onto their tasks, or have concerns that the transition will not deliver benefits. Effective change management, including the implementation of a roadmap, can help address transition challenges. 

Technology gaps

Many legacy tech stacks don’t offer the kind of flexibility that agile workflows demand. Companies should seek technology tools that facilitate the fundamentals of agile work, including collaboration between technical and nontechnical teams, the automation of manual tasks, and efficient feedback. It’s also important to think about the future: your tech stack should be extensible so that your teams can integrate new tools to ensure continuous improvement. 

Cultural inflexibility

Entrenched workflows may create an “if it ain’t broke” mentality amongst teams and leadership, especially in organizations where brand and content governance is inflexible. Teams can address this kind of cultural inertia by providing data-driven insight into the effectiveness of agile work, or demonstrating the capabilities of new technology tools in comparison to outdated legacy tech. 

Lack of visibility

A lack of visibility between teams that are working on different aspects of a project may make it difficult to communicate the benefits of agile work. In these contexts, knowledge and data can be siloed, and collaboration stymied. Agile workflows require clear communication, cross-departmental visibility, and accountability. 

Developing an agile workflow process

The exact details of your agile methodology will reflect the demands of your workplace, and your projects. However, the agile workflow lifecycle typically involves the following key steps: 

Ideation

At the ideation stage, you’ll set out the plan for the project that includes reviewing the backlog of work that needs to be completed, and how that work will be organized into sprints.

Assignment

Once you’ve set the scope of your agile project and mapped the work required into sprints, you can assign teams to their tasks. You’ll have to allocate resources and funding depending on the timeframe and goals of each team.

Iteration

With sprints organized, teams can initiate and begin making progress on their tasks. After each sprint and feedback round, the project moves into a new phase of iteration. 

Limited public release

At some point in the project iteration, a version of the product or service may be released to a limited section of the public for the purposes of feedback. Any insight can be fed back into the next round of feedback and implemented in the next sprint. 

Launch

At the end of the project production timeline, with all feedback implemented, the product can be launched. In the case of digital products or services, this means that a new website or app, or new blog or product page goes live, or, in the case of physical retail, a product is shipped.

Creating agile workflows with Contentful

Contentful is designed to help brands implement and optimize agile workflows across every part of their digital marketing infrastructure. 

On the Contentful digital experience platform, creative and technical teams work together seamlessly to shape digital experiences. Headless, composable, and extensible, our platform empowers marketers, editors, and creators to launch campaigns and new content on a daily basis using tools like Contentful Studio and Contentful Personalization, while software developers and engineers build out an ecosystem of integrated, best-in class microservices to power their digital offering over the long term.   

From startups launching debut products to enterprise organizations serving thousands of customers, we’ve helped brands around the world adopt agile workflows and unlock new approaches to digital marketing. 

Don’t let linear limitations hold your brand back: create an account in minutes and unleash your teams’ potential with Contentful.

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