Are the customer involved enough?

A while and several blog drafts since my last post now, but here it is.

The question is really, are the customer enabled to be involved enough? While we are quick to think if the customer are participating in creating the backlog or the sprintlog. By this having ownership in the decisions made. Not long ago on InfoQ Little and Spayd gave their views on agile and organisational change and they mention the importance of the customer being part of the agile process if the deliveries are to be successful. This is very true, but are they ready in their organisation to handle the deliveries?

As the Agile Manifesto principle states: Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. This assume that the customer are able to handle these deliveries at the pace they are coming. Further the manifesto claim that Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. If we are to adhere to these principles we have to enable the customer to also become agile in their process of receiving the delivieries.

To take a practicle example of this I can relate to my current project which is in the process of implementing a more agile approach. Agreements have been met and deliveries have been delivered, but the receiving end are not able to handle the deliveries at such a pace. They lack both the manpower and the routines to test the deliveries thus bringing us back to how it was before. The team cannot keep on delivering while the tests are not being managed and we have to set a new pace. A good article on Agile Journal describe this scenario as candy coming faster on the conveyor belt, it creates trouble handling them.

This shows that agile processes sets new demands to the organisations not only where the deliveries are being produced, but also in the receiving organisation. Now you have not one, but two organisations that has to adopt agile. The question is are the customer involved enough to make that change?