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Blogs Featured Blogs CM for Agile Tips for an effective Agile Customer Validation approach
Tips for an effective Agile Customer Validation approach |
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| Saturday, 23 July 2011 12:19 |
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Gaining periodic customer feedback of working software is an important aspect of agile development, because it ensures that you are constructing a valuable solution for the customer. Without customer validation, you are not really applying agile; you are just doing a form of iterative development without aligning your work with the customer’s need. While the engineering practices applied within an agile project focus on building the product right, the validation practices focus on building the right product. The notion of thinking through and establishing a serious validation approach for the product, which I term the Agile Customer Validation Vision (ACVV), is missing from agile projects—and even missing within the bailiwick of agile practices. This vision is a strategy for identifying the right customers, establishing validation sessions throughout the project, and then motivating the customers to attend the validation sessions. Establish Customer Profiles Customer profiles are important to a successful implementation of customer validation. A customer profile identifies common traits in your target customers, including demographics, buying patterns, and areas of interest. The goal is to identify and select customers who meet the profile you are looking for and who are willing to provide feedback. Motivate Customers to Attend Start by inviting customers to just one end-of-sprint review or demo session and getting their input. Customers who have not experienced something like this before typically are impressed to see working software so early in a release lifecycle. If they like the first validation session, then invite them to the next end-of-sprint review and excite them by highlighting where you’ve incorporated their input. At this point, ask the customers if they want to participate periodically at a per-sprint cadence. Consider Various Types of Customer Validation • End-of-Sprint Review/Demo—This is a type of validation that demonstrates the working software completed during the sprint, shown to customers in order to both highlight progress and gain the all-important customer feedback. • Hands-on Experience—This is a type of validation where customers will exercise the software in a hands-on manner in a simulated or pilot working environment. • On-premise Installation Validation—this is a type of validation where customers physically install the working software into their environment. Once you have established the Agile Customer Validation Vision, it is important to share it with the team so that everyone is aware of the vision and the importance of the validation activities. To read the full article, go to: http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/columns/column-articles/6310-agile-customer-validation-vision  Posted: 2011-07-23 20:19:39Author:
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