What happens in a typical day during an iteration?
As a customer of Extreme Programming (XP) software, you will sit with the team full-time to write tests, answer questions, and set priorities. Having the customer with the team is crucial in helping the team go as fast as possible. I once worked with a cross-functional team that had moved into one large room for a key project. In the “lessons learned” session, a manager in the marketing group said he thought the experience was great, because he was answering questions right when they came up and he could see the progress resulting from his answers. He admitted that when he was back in his office, he’d get a voicemail, but put off answering for a day or two. (Meanwhile, the developers either made a guess or worked on something less important.) It takes many decisions to develop software. If a team can get its answers or decisions in minutes instead of hours or days, its speed will be much higher. XP is not the only approach that recognizes the value of an on-site customer. Tom Peters sa
