Customer Participation: A Chicken or Pig Decision

Home  >  Articles  > 
Customer Participation: A Chicken or Pig Decision

Doug DeCarlo, Principal, The Doug DeCarlo Group

October 15, 2007






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.



Please login/register to read the entire article.





sponsored announcements and special offers
Difficult for competitors to equal. EMA reviews IBM Rational's new quality & requirements management offerings. The verdict, "For companies seeking to improve ROI delivered by software projects,we believe Rational's value proposition is difficult to match."

Microsoft Project Conference 2000
Exclusively disclosing the powerful capabilities included in Microsoft Project 2010 and Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solutions while providing real world guidance on how Microsoft Project 2007 and Microsoft EPM Solutions are helping customers today with project and portfolio management to save money, enhance efficiency and prepare for future growth. Register Today!

Use WorkLenz PPM to Manage Agile Software Development
We invite you to download Métier’s latest white paper, Agile Software Development with WorkLenz, to learn how you can use WorkLenz to manage agile within your organization.



"More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly."
- Woody Allen