Knowledge sharing VI: don't forget the customer
11. Don't Forget The Customer
In a software project you don’t only exchange knowledge between team members but also with a customer. How do we make sure that a person capable of providing required information to a customer is available all the time? We simply follow the practices I mentioned in the previous posts of this series. As a result, we get a whole team capable of providing this feedback.
We also work very closely with our customers and we keep communication with them as frequent as possible.
In addition we try to be transparent to them as much as we can. This way, we never have to prepare big status reports and the customers get knowledge about the projects on a daily basis.
Finally, what if you follow the practices mentioned so far but you still find yourself in a situations where the only people with required knowledge are not available when needed? React! If time allows, try to find a root cause and a solution immediately. If you don’t have time, raise the problem at the next iteration retrospective meeting and try to find the actions to resolve these issues.
Every project is different and while all these practices solve most of knowledge sharing problems for us, we are always trying to be pragmatic and find the best solution for specific situation.