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Customer Participation: A Chicken or Pig Decision
Doug is the author of the landmark book, Extreme Project Management®: Using Leadership, Principles and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility. He works with clients who undertake projects in very demanding environments: those settings that feature high speed, high change, high unpredictability and high stress. Doug has lived in the trenches—from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to Beijing, China—with over 275 project teams with budgets that ranged from $25,000 to over $25 million. He is one of the founders of the Agile Leadership Network, an organization dedicated to connecting, developing and supporting great project leaders. He is known for his hard-hitting and humorous keynote speeches that address vital issues facing today’s project-based organizations. You can visit Doug at www.dougdecarlo.com.
You can hardly have a conversation about agile project management or agile development without introducing the term “collaboration.” The word permeates all flavors of agile project management. Besides being ubiquitous, collaboration is considered to be a pre-requisite for agile practice: no “collaboration,” no agile.
Yet in practice, the “C” word has become watered down to mean just about any level of customer participation, from simply being on tap to answer questions from time to time, to mutual accountability as a member of the core project team. We know from the timeworn metaphor about the infamous ham and eggs breakfast that there are levels of participation. As the metaphor goes, when preparing a ham and eggs breakfast, the chicken is involved but the pig is committed.
All Participation is Not Collaboration
There are levels of participation. In discussing this with Ahmed Sidky, Ph.D., we distinguished four levels of customer involvement.
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Answering Questions. One or more representatives from the customer organization agree to give quick turnaround to questions that arise throughout the project.
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Giving Feedback. Designated members from the customer organization agree to participate in periodic review sessions and make decisions on the future course of the project.
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