Introducing XP—XP Practice 1: On-Site Customer

Microsoft .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual C# (CSharp, C Sharp, C-Sharp) Developer Training, Visual Studio

XP Practice 1: On-Site Customer

Traditional development takes an approach where requirements are defined at the beginning of the development life cycle, without the presence of the developers who will actually develop the project. To compensate for the absence of the developers, extensive documentation is generated to communicate the intent of the customer’s wants and needs. This requires the customers to know exactly what they want and need at the beginning of the project. It also requires that those wants and needs remain constant throughout the development process.

Traditional development also has the customers wait until the end of the project to perform acceptance tests. Since this is the first time the customers have seen the system, they are often shocked at the results. In many cases, the requirements are misinterpreted or missed completely.

XP address these issues by asking the customer to be more involved throughout the entire development process. The more involved the customer, the more likely the development team will deliver what the customer wants.

XP believes that the best way to get the customers engaged is to have them sit with the development team, allowing them to give and receive feedback and communicate with the development team members.

Note Usually, the development team will need to convince the customer that sitting with the development team is the right thing to do, as the customer will usually resist such a request. Your team will need to describe the benefits to the customer. These benefits should include the customer’s ability to make changes throughout the development process, to receive rapid feedback as to what is going on with the project, and to make better decisions concerning the project. If you are unsuccessful in convincing your customers that they need to sit with you, you will have a difficult time working effectively as an XP team.