“Collabor- What? With who? Do I have to?”
Projects are about people. I pointed out how the manifesto started with people in the first post I did on the values, Individuals and Interactions. Here we return to people again.
Customer Collaboration
over
contract negotiation
Some people have a false belief that the manifest trumpets one side of the value pair instead of or in spite of the other. This is the one where I think it’s the most difficult to maintain that illusion. Without a contract, money has no reason to change hands. There are very few people who will get involved in a project, large or small, without some type of contract, at the very least recorded verbal assent.
With contracts so central to projects, what does it mean to value customer collaboration more?
The first thing I want to think of with this is that the manifesto is focused on teams working together towards delivering great software. Consider the classic picture of landing a big contract. A sales person, or team even, goes into negotiations with a potential client. They go back and forth and ultimately come out with a contract. They hand that over to the development team and walk away. I believe part of the point behind this value is that the development team values being part of this process. They are the team ultimately being held responsible for delivering the product, and they want some input on what that promise is.
The next thing I want to focus on is the word collaboration. What if we shortened this value, even more, to read that we value collaboration over negotiation? In a negotiation, each party is trying to get themselves the best deal. In a collaboration, everybody is working together for the best overall outcome. The difference is subtle. When this is done right the relationship between the customer and the development team starts out strong and the chances for success are noticeably higher than when one or both parties leave a negotiation table feeling as if they gave too much ground.
Finally, we return to people with the customer. The development team doesn’t want to consult a contract with questions, but rather they want to interact with the customer. At least, they should.
Do your teams value customer collaboration? Do you wonder what that might even look like? I’m happy to help. Schedule a call with me and we’ll discover a little bit of where you are, where you want to be, and how I can help.
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