A Changing Landscape in Publishing

Enormous rates of change are occurring. Brick-and-mortar bookstores are suffering, and readers have shifted ways of finding books and authors. Even libraries are receiving less funding, and much of their shelf space is being converted to computers and other media.

On top of this, readers can now choose between reading on desktops, mobile platforms, and less and less, traditional hardback and paperback books. Now, different forms of media are competing against each other for the same content.

In this new publishing environment, traditional revenue models are changing for advertising and subscriptions so new models are needed that can take advantage of this new digital world. But publishers are still discovering those models.

The music industry experienced a similar seismic shift. Traditional album buying flew out the door when iTunes flew in. Free and often illegal music downloads stirred up a fresh debate on copyright law (enriching scores of lawyers along the way), and avenues for music today are dramatically different from those 10 and 20 years ago. But new songs and albums are created all the time, and musical life goes on. It just looks different.

The same can be said of publishing. For some organizations, massive industry changes are terrifying; for others, opportunity is recognized, flexibility is sought, and inspection and adaptation are seen as paramount. Some publishers say that because of the rapidity of change, they’re not sure which data they should use to form their decisions. The sand is shifting under their feet.

Scrum can help the publishing industry flourish. The very qualities that so many people in the industry find unsettling — rapid change, shifting consumer needs and desires, and uncertain sources of revenue — are the ones in which scrum excels.

Inspecting, adapting, and refactoring

Inspection, adaptation, and refactoring are the heart of scrum, and they fit the world of publishing. Like each industry we cover in this book, publishing has its own set of challenges and scrum solutions.

Changing readers

What readers expect from a book, magazine article, or newspaper feed is changing. Immediate information and instant gratification are the norm. Unless the author is already a huge best seller with a wide following, most readers won’t sit down to finish a 1,000-page tome.

Incorporating rapid feedback from readers, via short articles, blogs, and analytical tracking tools for reader click-through rates and responses, a flood of data can be accessed. News media, publishers, and individual authors can quickly see what readers are responding to and adjust accordingly.

Not only does this rapid feedback cycle mean better content, but it also means faster monetization. As you inspect and adapt on the go, you’re able to follow those paths that lead to more clicks and hits, and therefore incorporate more revenue streams through advertising and sales.

Changing writers

Hugh Howey broke more than one mold with his New York Times best-selling novel Wool. He published the original short story on Amazon for 99 cents a copy and received such overwhelming positive response that he kept on writing.

Howey wrote and self-published five serial stories, getting feedback from readers with each one, and combined them to create the book Wool Omnibus (self-published by Broad Reach Publishing). It landed on the Times best-seller list and created a sweet seven-figure revenue stream for him.

Serial stories are produced in sprints. Feedback comes from readers and potential book buyers. Some authors use self-publishing where each detail could be inspected and adapted along the way. The entire success story was an unintentional variation of scrum.

After self-publishing and reaching the best-seller list, Howey signed a contract with a traditional publishing firm, Simon & Schuster. In yet another mold-shattering move, he sold only the print rights to the publisher, keeping all digital rights and proceeds for himself.

Changing products

What and how people read are in flux. Graphic novels, manga, and interactive serials combine with novels, articles, and blogs to create a wide net within which authors place their work. Add e-readers, smartphone apps, and steadily decreasing hard copy numbers, and you have a changing world.

No author or reader is untouched by this literary revolution. T.S. Eliot’s classic epic poem The Waste Land has its own iPad app, but it isn’t just a copied-and-pasted edition of the text. The app incorporates these features:

A filmed performance of the poem by Fiona Shaw
Audio readings by T.S. Eliot and actors such as Alec Guinness and Viggo Mortensen
Interactive notes to help the reader with cultural references and poetic nuances
Videos of literary experts providing insight on the masterpiece
Original manuscript pages that show the reader how the poem developed under the guidance of Ezra Pound

The publishers (Faber and Touch Press) aren’t sitting on the sidelines lamenting the good old days. They’re jumping right in and producing great art in new ways.

For publishers and authors alike, scrum’s feedback cycle allows for fast input and, therefore, accelerated time to market, creating products that customers want and will pay for. Those who embrace this change and incorporate agile frameworks (such as scrum) that allow for it are excelling in this new environment.

“Survival of the fastest to change” is the mantra. See change as an opportunity, and you’ll come out on top.

Applying scrum

As in software, publishing content can be easily and frequently inspected, adapted, and refactored until it’s ready for publication. For short works, the process is easier, but it can be adapted to all sizes and lengths.

Creating content for YouTube, for example, is a natural for inspection and adaptation. Post content, and with analytics, you can see an amazing array of data, such as how many people saw it, did they subscribe to your channel, how long they stayed, and what links they followed.

For longer pieces, the process works as well. Mark’s first book, Agile Project Management For Dummies (published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc):

Mark established the vision for the book (a field guide that people who were doing scrum could use as a reference).
He established a roadmap: the book outline.
He broke the outline into book sections (releases). Each chapter became its own sprint.
He started with Chapter 1, writing it according to Wiley’s For Dummies development standards.

After he sent Chapter 1 to the Wiley editor, he was told that she hated it and why (feedback, feedback, feedback).
He implemented that feedback in Chapter 1, identified the lessons learned, and used what he learned to write Chapter 2.

He sent Chapter 2 to the Wiley editor and was told that she didn’t much like it and why (feedback, feedback, feedback).
He improved Chapter 2 and used what he learned to write Chapter 3. That time, when he sent Chapter 3 to the Wiley editor, she told him, “It’s okay, but it would be better if you …” (feedback, feedback, feedback).

This cycle continued until Mark and the editor synced up with Chapter 5.

Had he written all 20 chapters and sent them all to Wiley at once, and the editor said she hated them, the book would not be in the marketplace today.

THE SCRUM IN SCRUM FOR DUMMIES

With the experience garnered from his last book tucked firmly under his belt, Mark applied what he learned in his approach to writing the first edition of this book. There’s truly scrum in Scrum For Dummies.

He set up the book as a virtual task board. His sticky notes were virtual, and the columns from left to right were

A product backlog listing all the chapters, front and back matter, and anything else relevant
To do
Doing
Done

Each chapter included tasks such as research, write, edit (feedback!), revise, review, and approval. In some cases, multiple tasks were created (such as for multiple edits).

Requirements were chapters. Tasks were chapter activities. The publishing team members (development team) swarmed each section and chapter and then moved to the next. There were daily scrums in which each party outlined what he was doing and raised any impediments. Each weekly sprint was followed by a review and retrospective, in which team members worked out what could be done better.

The clarity was amazing. All members of the authoring team knew what they were supposed to be doing and by when.

News Media and Scrum

The news media has experienced a seismic shift all its own. Print has gone online, advertising changes with every new medium (such as print, radio, TV, online, social, and mobile), and readers’ news-gathering experience has metamorphosed. For example, many people no longer get a daily newspaper delivered to their homes.

But in scrum, change is good. At least, scrum helps you harness change for improvement.

What the industry is experiencing is disruption. Clayton Christensen coined the concept of “disruptive innovation,” which can be described as what happens when a new product or service enters an existing market and relentlessly gains share until it uproots well established rivals.

The biggest challenges for traditional print media organizations are finding ways to monetize their current product offerings and going digital. Print and digital are different beasts. Smart media companies that have both a print and digital presence have separated the two sides of their businesses to allow them to do what they do best. The digital side of these companies, as pointed out in Chapter 7, implement scrum. But what about the traditional sides?

Brady Mortensen, a newsroom veteran and senior director (product owner) of publishing systems at Deseret Digital Media, said,

In reality, news organizations have probably been practicing a lot of scrum techniques for many years without realizing it. Daily scrum meetings are not uncommon. With local TV stations or daily papers, the “sprint” length is one day, and the end product is a collection of newscasts and a paper. There is also a usable product created at the end of each cycle. Newsrooms live and die by these practices. What would help traditional news organizations is to recognize that what they already do is scrum-like, but to embrace the techniques even more.

The companies that are flourishing in this new environment are those that have proved to be nimble — and especially those that have adopted scrum to identify their highest-risk areas at regular intervals and pivot (inspection and adaptation).

Organizations such as The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and National Public Radio use aspects of scrum in their newsrooms. Some specific techniques are as follows.

Chicago Tribune: Teams begin by asking who the users are, what they need, and what features can be included to fulfill those needs. Teams then prioritize features in piles labeled Must, Want, Nice, and Meh. The teams toss out the bottom two piles and work from feature to feature. When the deadline arrives, iteration stops.

The assigning editor is usually the product owner. The development team consists of journalists, designers, photographers, editors, and others related to developing content.

Scrum reduces the number of meetings, which can be overwhelming, especially in digital media.
NPR: NPR uses a two-week sprint cycle, with a two-hour-long sprint planning meeting at the start.

Stand-up daily scrums last for 15 minutes. Teams coordinate who’s working on what stories, and impediments are identified and removed.
Washington Post: The paper has a specific agile technique for developing content for its live-blogging platform.

The team begins with a vision: What is the effect it wants to have on the user?

In the daily scrum meetings, the team decide what they are working on for that day. Journalists pair up for work, which is a process The Post had used since long before scrum was implemented. Two journalists sit at the same desk and finish the project. This intensifies the work and limits distractions.

The goal is to go live with the news as soon as possible, and then get feedback from the users and the group. Based on the feedback, the team adapts and adjusts for the next cycle.

Defining done for content

Using scrum to develop nonsoftware products and services, such as content for publication, is quite similar to using scrum for software. The definition of done for content development teams should clearly outline what it means to consider content ready for prime time.

Going back to our roadmap to value, a publishing scrum team should have a vision statement that states what readers’ needs are, how the publication meets the needs of those readers and is differentiated in its market and industry, and how the vision ties in to the corporate strategy. (For more on vision statements, see Chapter 2.)

The roadmap reflects this vision by outlining the areas of editorial emphasis to be covered by the publication, including any seasonal considerations. The product backlog is a prioritized and ordered list of proposed features, series, and stories to be researched, developed, edited, and published.

The vision is the framework for defining what it means to have done content, one story or article at a time. The definition of done might look something like this:

With each article, we have succeeded in fulfilling our vision to [statement of how the need is met and differentiated] after we have
Addressed the who, what, when, where, and why in the lead. Those elements are not buried.
Ensured balance, making sure that both sides of an issue are represented.
Ensured that search engine optimization standards and requirements are met in article elements such as headline, tags, and body.
Cited at least one source for each side of the issue.
Checked twice for accuracy to avoid embellishing and bias.
Prepared accompanying content for social media posts.
Verified that line edits and copyedits are completed.

A newsroom in which these criteria are front and center for content curators, editors, and producers to see at all times provides consistency and clarity on what is expected and what success looks like.

The news-media scrum team

A content team director for a major regional news site identified the following scrum implementation. This team’s role was to curate, edit, and post daily content to the site. Scrum is still applied, but the team wasn’t developing code. The site’s adoption of scrum covered the following issues:

What is the product? (News content customers want to read)
What is the product backlog? (Potential news stories and associated media posts, which were constantly changing)
What is the release? (Continuous delivery; content is delivered as soon as it is edited and approved)
What is the sprint duration? (The 24-hour news cycle)
When is sprint planning? (First thing every morning; backlog stories that have received editing approval are discussed)
When is the sprint review? (End of each day or before sprint planning each morning, which includes a review of the articles published and resulting analytics for inspection and adaptation for the next sprint’s articles)
Who is on the development team? (Content curators, reporters, photographers, editors, graphic artists, and videographers)
Who is the product owner? (The managing editor)
Who is the scrum master? (A member of the development team who understands and has experience with scrum, and has the organizational clout to remove impediments for the team)
Who does backlog refinement, and when? (The entire development team and the product owner throughout each day, curating and evaluating proposed stories, including breaking news)

When these basic questions are asked and answered, the broader picture comes to light. Each role, artifact, and event can be identified and assigned.

Sprint flexibility

Daily sprints in a news organization often provide the flexibility needed for daily news feeds. You can’t plan the news five days from now, but you can plan a day of story time — most of the time. Breaking and unexpected news stories can be dealt with during the sprint by direct communication among team members.

Media with longer content cycles, such as magazines (online and/or in print form), can have longer sprint cycles for content. Each feature — a section, article, chapter, or other segment — can be broken into requirements and tasks when appropriate.

Publishing: A Shifting Landscape