Having a Customer Focus in Agile Software Development

This research looks at the customer focus of agile software development teams. The study is part of a larger study examining how the twelve principles of Beyond Budgeting1 The importance of the customer to agile software development teams operating within large organisations (Augustine, 2005, Highsmith, 2004) and to the organisation as a whole (Gulati, 2007, Gulati and Oldroyd, 2005) is well documented. The construct “customer focus” has been developed by the Total Quality Management (TQM) literature (Ahire et al., 1996, Sousa, 2003). Ahire et al. (1996) developed and validated a customer focus construct in the context of manufacturing firms. They found that quality is influenced by top management’s commitment through customer focus. Issac et al. (2004) developed a conceptual framework for TQM in software organisations which also included the customer focus construct are operationalised in the context of an agile development environment. Using two case study sites and a semi-structured interview approach the customer focus of agile teams operating within two large organisations is examined. In these organisations the direct customer is not the end user of the product; rather they are another group within the organisation downstream of the agile development team. The results suggest that while organisations may espouse to have a customer focus the structures may not be in place to enable sufficient sharing of customer knowledge and utilisation of customer feedback. Emergent themes from the study suggest that customer identification, customer characteristics, customer location and the teams’ experience of the customer and their domain may have an impact on the customer focus of an agile team.