In a Nutshell

There are three customer commitments evident in the 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto. Agile teams require rigour and disciplines that align to all three.

Our primary commitment should be to the on-time and continuous delivery of a valuable product. This is spelled out in the first principle of the Agile Manifesto: “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable [software].”

A secondary commitment should be to adapt to the customer’s changing needs and is reflected in the first half of the second principle of the Agile Manifesto: “Welcome changing requirements, even late in development.”

Finally, we need to be committed to always confirming our alignment with the customer’s needs. This is about ‘doing the right thing’ as well as ‘doing things right’. We don’t want to be blindly delivering what was asked for when we can know it will lead to problems. And we don’t want to be pulled in multiple directions on the back of every customer whim and lose focus of the end goal, burning the team out in the process. Instead we need to be honest brokers and trusted advisers, always asking what we can do to maximise advantage for our customer? This is reflected in the second half of the second principle of the Agile Manifesto: “Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage”.