Customer-developer links in software development

Reviewer: Haim I. Kilov

The authors describe 15 customer-developer links. They interviewed people at 17 companies (6 client-oriented and 11 market-oriented) about the use of these links in 31 more-or-less-successful projects. The paper's conclusions are that it helps to count the links (there should be at least 4); direct links are substantially better than indirect; and it helps to consider links not traditionally used in the particular type of environment. These conclusions are quite evident, and—especially the second one—seem to be useful. Nevertheless, the authors' perspective seems to be skewed and insufficient for success, bec ause they omit essential aspects of the problem at hand. First, business specifications—describing the business independently of its possible (partial) automation—are different from system specifications [1]. Moreover, creating a specification and developing a system that satisfies the specification are different activities [2], and developers are not necessarily the same people as specifiers. Second, a specification should be abstract (no irrelevant details), precise (no guesses by developers), and explicit (no implicit assumptions, which are often understood differently by different people). Third, programmers often tell the interviewer what she or he wants to hear rather than the truth [3]. Fourth, the quality of a link is substantially more important than the quantity of links; a good business specification leading to a successful project may be obtained by properly using only one or two links.