Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation is one of the four statements of the Agile Manifesto. If you are a small software company or you are working in a JAD with your customers, then customer collaboration is the actual customer who is purchasing your solution. If you are large organization, the customer may be your internal customer representative – like product management.
When it comes to today’s marketplace, it is more important to understand the customer’s needs than what was negotiated in the contract. To develop software that meets customer needs requires regular communication with the customer all along the development process (and prior to the development process and after development).
Customer collaboration is especially key to determining, developing and deploying a successful experience design for your customers and end-users. UX professionals collaborate with customers and customer representatives early and often throughout the lifecycle of a product. Ensure that your UX professionals – either internal or external resources – are involved early and often in defining and designing your solution.