The XP Customer Role in Practice:Three Case Studies

We used interpretative in-depth case studies

We obtained multiple perspectives, from the customer, developers and business people

We used semi-structured one-on-one interviews to collect the data

We validated our raw data and our interpreted findings with each interviewee

We use a number of quotes from the interview to illustrate our findings

The XP Customer Role in Practice Martin, Biddle & Noble Slide 2

Method

ProjectEndeavour

The XP Customer Role in Practice Martin, Biddle & Noble Slide 3

Intranet content - outsourced XP project

Three New Zealand organisations were involved: KiwiCorp - client DevCorp – development vendor BureauCorp – infrastructure vendor

The project has previously been tried and failed

The XP Customer is a KiwiCorp librarian. She had access to specialist support: Prioritisation decisions – KiwiCorp Manager Acceptance testing – KiwiCorp Testers Writing user stories – DevCorp Analyst

Non-standard XP implementation, an up-front requirements phase occurred

Scientific software product - XP project

RavenCorp is a start-up company based in the U.S.

Project is to move an academic concept to a commercial product

The XP Customer is one of the founding research scientists and has had access to specialist support: Product concept & vision – founding director Testing – research scientists + testing specialist

But he also had to undertake multiple roles including programmer and development manager

All XP practices have been followed, planning process was modified to reduce meeting length

Project Discovery

The XP Customer Role in Practice Martin, Biddle & Noble Slide 4

Application development tool - XP project

EagleCorp is a U.S. software product company

Project is to redevelop their flagship product

The XP Customer is an existing product manager

He had access to specialist support: User interface design – user interface designer Architecture + technical requirements – architect User guide development – technical writer Testing – quality assurance team

All XP practices have been followed, personas were utilised to assist with user story development

ProjectAtlantis

The XP Customer Role in Practice Martin, Biddle & Noble Slide 5

The XP Customer must be supported by other organisation & project roles

Varies in each case as each customer had different strengths and weaknesses

The XP Customer needs more practices and techniques to support their role

Particularly requirements gathering and decomposition techniques

The importance of prioritisation is something that is learnt by experience

The KiwiCorp and RavenCorp customers did not fully grasp the need to prioritise until the end

Results

The XP Customer Role in Practice Martin, Biddle & Noble Slide 6

Is it sustainable?

“We probably needed about three of me … it’s been my life for about a year … look at these grey hairs” Customer, KiwiCorp

“I’ve always worked at least 70, [or] 80 [hours a week] ... I don’t even mind it, its like what I do …” Customer, RavenCorp

“The iteration processes are quite exhausting. Every two weeks you are doing another product release … so it’s a very intense process to maintain… I think it’s worked very well, but … I don’t know how long it will be possible to keep this pace up” Customer, EagleCorp

Results

The XP Customer Role in Practice Martin, Biddle & Noble Slide 7

The XP Customer role is difficult and requires serious consideration

The existing XP Customer practices appear to be achieving excellent results

However, we have found that the XP customer is consistently under significantly more pressure than the developers or other project participants

Leading us to question the sustainability of this role, particularly on long or high-pressure projects

XP has focussed on building effective development team practices: we now need to explore the processes that will support the XP customerConclusions

The XP Customer Role in Practice Martin, Biddle & Noble Slide 8

AngelaMartin

VictoriaUniversity

WellingtonNew Zealand

RobertBiddle

JamesNoble

The XP Customer Role in Practice:Three Case Studies