Business Value

"The heartbeat of XP." -- Value as defined by the customer.

It deserves reiteration:

: Programmers are not customers. Programmers should not make business decisions, such as deciding what has BusinessValue.

ExtremeProgramming works by pretending we are all StarTrek Ferengi, and we are in it for The Profit. The OnsiteCustomer's lobes attend to their customer's needs, and they request we add increments of BusinessValue to the project. We finish them as fast as our clever Ferengi minds can type, but with a simple design and lots of tests so we can do it again. We only invest in the future via ArchitectTheNegativeSpace. The OnsiteCustomer then sells the new feature to the customer, takes the profit and uses that to pay us for the next feature.

See XpIsFreeMarket

If you program because you love it, it takes discipline to moderate your designs to take BusinessValue into account.

CategoryCustomer