5 Initiation ↑

No. 29 – Pick the Right Sort of Customer Proxy

Nearly every development effort will require some individual or small group to make decisions on behalf of your customer. In Agile literature, this person would be referred to as the Product Owner. In other contexts, he or she might be referred to as the product manager, or the system manager, or simply a responsible business analyst.

Whatever they are called, this person or persons has a critical role to play, since they must ultimately make important decisions about what will be deemed acceptable and desirable and necessary by the broader customer community.

This person should:

There is no surer way to cripple a project than to designate a customer proxy who lacks one or more of these critical qualities.


Next: Craft a Product Vision