the xp customer role in practice: three case studies
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The XP Customer Role in Practice: Three Case Studies. Method. 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 - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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