Customers and Users customer customer user user

Customers have a key role is agile software development processes. The Agile Manifesto Agile Manifesto statement “customer collaborationcustomer over contract negotiation” explicitly suggests alternative work relationships with the customer, in which the customer is part of the team, rather than an entity with whom team members and management argue about what should be developed and when, and what should not be developed at all. This chapter describes the customer role in agile development environments and how to enhance communication with the customer. In many cases, the customer also represents the user group and is expected to evaluate the software product from the user perspective. This, however, turns out to be an ineffective mechanism in many cases. Accordingly, this chapter also describes the users’ role and presents a mechanism to increase their involvement and feedback during the development process. Specifically, data obtained from user evaluations is used to refine the user interface design, to increase product usability, and, consequently, to increase product quality.