XP in Complex Project Settings: Some Extensions

XP has one weakness when it comes to complex application domains or difficult situations at the customer’s organization: the customer role does not reflect the different interests, skills and forces with which we are confronted in development projects. We propose splitting the customer role into a user and a client role. The user role is concerned with domain knowledge; the client role defines the strategic or business goals of a development project and controls its financial resources. It is the developers’ task to integrate users and clients into a project that builds a system according to the users’ requirements, while at the same time attain the goals set by the client. We present document types from the Tools&Materials approach (cf. [6]) which help developers to integrate users and clients into a software project. All document types have been used successfully in a number of industrial projects together with the well-known XP practices.