 Everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the conference board event. It's called the Sixth Annual Innovation Masterclass. It's here at Xerox PARC. I'm really excited to be at Xerox PARC. I've never been here. I live like a stone's throw away. And as you know, if you're any type of a student of history, this is where so many of the really core, fundamental, foundational technologies were developed long, long time ago. My gooey, a lot of fun stuff. But that's what now we're talking about today. We're talking about helping companies be better at innovation, a series of fantastic presentations. We're excited to have our first guest. He's Vittorio Villarengo. And he is the VP of Cloud Security for McAfee, just coming off your presentation. So great to see you. And likewise, I'm excited to be here. Yeah, so you were talking a lot about Sprint and we talked all the time about DevOps and how that world has really changed in the software development world to get away from waterfall. But you talked about kind of applying those same principles not just for software development but in marketing and your role as a marketer. How did you come to that kind of conclusion that this is probably a better way to get things done? Yeah, well, I have an interesting background where I used to run engineering and product management and then I moved into the dark side to marketing and I successfully used Scrum in building products. And if you look at Scrum and Agile methodologies, at the end of the day, they're methodologies to get things done in a world that changes often. And that applies to any functions. And so I said, why not doing it in marketing? And so I've been doing it in marketing now for six years. But you juxtaposed it, it's now December 6th, I believe. So everyone, the whole room got to get a good laugh out of them as it is in the throes of their annual business planning coming off their QBRs as they wrapped up 2018. So there is kind of an annual process and there is an annual budget. So how did you find a convenient way to marry the two things together? I think that everything is frantically pretending to know what's going to happen next year and building plans that go out 12 months that never pan out. Right, right. Now unless you're doing something that is the same thing over and over again, then you can. But if you're doing innovation by definition, you don't know what's going to happen. So I think a better approach is to align around the goals and then take the goals, decentralize the execution of the goals to the function. And then in my case, in marketing, I take those goals that are applicable to me and I break it down using Scrum. And I do cycles of two weeks. I tell the people, I fill the backlog with all the top initiative that I think we should do. And then when we get into a sprint, I say, okay, what are the most important priorities for the next two weeks? I tell the team and then the team tells me what we need to do to achieve those goals. And every two weeks, I'm in front of them talking about priorities and then reviewing how we move the needles to achieve the goals. Right. So a lot of people, there's plenty of stuff out there for people that aren't familiar with how Scrum works and how this process. So we won't get on that, but what I want to talk about is some of the secondary benefits that maybe people don't understand. They're only looking at kind of the process of these two-week sprints. But you highlighted on a whole bunch of kind of side benefits that come as a result of this process. Number one, being constantly reinforcing your priorities which are the company's priorities to your team every two weeks. That's a pretty amazing communication flow. Yeah, look, when people think about Azure, they obsess about the stand-up meeting every day. People that are obsessed with that, they don't get Azure. What Azure is, is about constant communication about the priorities, letting the team innovate and tell you what to do, and then being able, every two weeks, to adjust to changes. So instead of executing against initiatives and plans that you built a year before that may not be relevant based on the market changes, you're actually dealing with the reality, measuring how you're progressing against the goals, and then make changes as you go. And it gives an amazing platform for even junior people in the team to step up. Sometimes in hierarchical structure, you have somebody junior really good that is boxed in the corner. With Scrum, I come up with the priorities. If somebody just out of college says, I'll take that, okay, go ahead, do it. And then if they deliver, good for them, good for you. Right, another, you touched on so many good topics, we could go on and on and on. Another one you talked about is really the divvying up of time. You try to manage kind of the interruptions for the team. You try to be that kind of traffic cop, if you will, to enable them to use, I think you said the target is 75% of the time during those two weeks is actually getting work done. And 25% of the time is managing the minutia that we have to manage every day. I think that's a really important concept, because I think a lot of times it's easy to do the minutia, because it's in front of your face. Super important role for a manager. Yeah, look, when it was the last time you liked being interrupted, right? And if you are using your intellect to design, to sell, to do whatever activity requires using your brain, content switches is really expensive. And so the idea of Scrum is that you plan these two weeks so you don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about three, six months out, just let's think about the next two weeks. And then during those two weeks, you never, ever, ever change the priorities. And so that allows engineers or professionals to stay focused on what they're trying to do and get it done. Right, right. Another piece that I thought was pretty interesting is you've got the two weeks sprints and you've got your two weeks priorities and you now have an ability to switch if you need to based on market pressures, competitive pressures, whatever. But how do you continue to tie that back to those goals? How do you make sure that you don't lose sight of the fact that maybe you didn't have an annual plan because we know that's gonna change, but you're still making sure you're driving towards kind of the general direction of where you're trying to go. So the way I do it, every two weeks, we look at all our top goals and we look at how closer we are to achieving those goals. And of course I map those goals, I split them by quarter and then by weeks so that at all times, you know if you're achieving your goals or not. And because of the two weeks interval, if the head of sales in my case comes and you know, they always have big priorities that has to be happened tomorrow. And- Not yesterday, usually they're yesterday. So usually I go to them and say, hey, here's the list of things I'm gonna deliver, my team is gonna deliver to you in an average next week, right? And is what this emergency you're talking about more important than this? In most cases, the answer is no. If the answer is yes, then the question is can that weigh a week? And then you have the full attention of my entire team. And so that way you keep doing what you do and in Scrum principle, you always shift. So you always work on things that you can actually shift during those two weeks. And then you can take the whole team and okay, let's now please the head of sales and go ahead with that priority. And the other thing is because we look at the goals every two weeks, I can also look at the other sales and say, you know, you really wanna run this program in pick your region, you know, South America where we have no, we don't have any goals of growth in that area this year. So you can also use the constant communication, constant interlocking goals to say, you know, maybe you shouldn't do it. Right. So last thing, Victoria, just to get your insight as you've been doing this for years. You know, what's the greatest benefit of managing a team this way that most people just don't get? I mean, we talked about the frequency of communications, you talked about the frequency of being able to change course. You know, what is it that people are still kind of doing it the old line way are missing? To me, Scrum forces you as a leader to focus on the two most important things that I think any leader should, you know, take care of. One, crisp priorities and communication. I think those are the roots of how many companies get in trouble when they don't have clear priorities at all levels and they don't communicate those priorities and the result they're achieving. And I think Scrum really forces you every two weeks to be there on the treadmill with the team. And the third thing I think is to empower the team to size and tell you what to do and how to do it and not you telling them what to do. You tell them what are the priorities. Let them tell you what is the best way to achieve the goals. Such a great lesson, right? Be a leader, not let your people do what you hired them to do. Yeah, because if you more and more. To me, if you're hiring great people, if you're managing them, what are you going to do? If you're people that are better than you, if you're managing them, what are you going to do? You're going to slow them down by definition. So let them tell you what to do, how to do it. Give them a direction and get out of the way. All right, Vittorio, thanks for taking a few minutes and really, really enjoyed your talk today. All right, we're at the Innovation Masterclass at Xerox PARC. You're watching theCUBE. See you next time. Thanks for watching.