RE: Responsibility

What I see from my perspective that you don't seem to see from yours is
that the customer, those whose lives are intimately affected by the
software we build, is part of the team. Nygard went over this ground
long ago in Participatory Design
http://www.cpsr.org/program/workplace/PD.html. The game where we
separate ourselves (as technical people) from those whose
responsibilities rely on the products we create is a nice, but limited,
game.
 
Is this passing the buck, abrogating responsibility? Not at all. The
customer service representative who will have people screaming at them
on the phone is responsible for transforming that unhappiness into
further business. Saying, "We should know their business better than
they do," sounds to me like arrogance. After I implement 5 CSR systems,
sure I'll know some technical details better than any given CSR, just
through sheer perspective. However, I still won't know what they know in
their guts.
 
The recent dock strike on the west coast was exactly about these issues.
The dock owners wanted to introduce a system that the individual workers
saw as taking away their power and security. Nobody bothered to try to
turn the process into a win-win(-win-win...). As the world gets more
interdependent, "We're from development. We know better." is going to be
decreasingly viable.
 
You pushed a button. I've seen so much harm done by people building
walls instead of bridges. XP is intended as an invitation to build
social networks between people with desires and people with
possibilities. Because it is extended from the possibilities side, folks
on the desire side have trouble seeing the invitation as it was
intended. That's what this list is about.
 
Kent

-----Original Message-----
From:
sentto-8233308-1134-1039728605-kent=threeriversinstitute.org-Hmr20et6RfIEVSi/[email protected]
ups.yahoo.com
[mailto:sentto-8233308-1134-1039728605-kent=threeriversinstitute.org@ret
urns.groups.yahoo.com] On Behalf Of Mary Poppendieck
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 1:30 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [XC]



Only for internal development do we allow the development team to pass
responsibility for success on to the customer.  It's a nice, but limited
concept.  

If you feel responsible for the overall business value you deliver, then
'customer on site' doesn't quit tell you enough about how to go about
it. I think that when the development team owns the responsibility for
delivering business value, and for uncovering what that really means,
and does not delegate this to 'the customer' (whoever that is), then you
have a dynamite approach.