Extreme Programming Installed

If the Customer Can't Be There

Sometimes the customer really is too valuable to be on-site. Stock traders are thought to fall into this group. Sometimes, the customer is in a different city from the programmers. This happens in many companies, and there's no way either customers or programmers are moving. Well, you're going to pay a price, but here are some tips on what to do.

First, try hard to get someone to represent the customer locally. This could be a non-programming project manager, a trainer, a tracker, or just someone in the company who is expert in the area. Let them handle the bulk of the interruptions, then get with the real customer off-line to double-check. If the customer and this pseudo-customer can get on the same wavelength, ...