Exploration Through Example

Example-driven development, Agile testing, context-driven testing, Agile programming, Ruby, and other things of interest to Brian Marick

191.8

⇒

167.2

⇒

186.2

183.6

184.0

183.2

184.6

Mon, 31 Jan 2005

I'm a Customer on an Agile project

The Agile Alliance is revamping our website. Micah Martin of ObjectMentor wrote the first version and did a fine job, but the site's been around for four years, and technology moves on. I've been keeping it up for a year, tinkering here and there, but I don't have time to do the complete rewrite we need.

So we took bids for the revamp. Unsurprisingly, we're running the project in an Agile style. (If the second iteration goes well, we're going to start deploying in two weeks.) And I'm the partly-on-site Customer for the project, since I live about five miles from the company that's doing the work.

I'm having a blast so far. It's great fun steering the project against the background of our original story list. But it's serious fun, because all three bids came in at about the same price, and it was about twice what we wanted to pay. So we're paying what we wanted to pay, which means that I'm steering the project knowing that I have to pack the most value into the time we have, since a lot of stories will fall off the end.

I hope this will give me a hint of the insider's view of what product owners go through, especially since I hope to concentrate a chunk of my effort this year on supporting them.

## Posted at 20:06 in category /aa-project [permalink] [top]