Software Management Manifesto

To the managers and customers of this software project:

Article 1: You have the right to an overall plan. The team should tell you what they could accomplish in the next year or two, and tell you how much that would cost.
Article 2: You have the right to see progress. From the very beginning of the project, the team should be producing functionality that you care about. The functionality should be in the form of a running system, proven to work by passing repeatable tests that you specify.
Article 3: You have the right to change your mind. As software development proceeds, you should be able to substitute new functionality for old. You should be able to change the relative priorities of the features of the system, dictating what should be done first and what should be done later.
Article 4: You have the right to be informed of schedule changes. Since some things will turn out to be easier than expected and some things harder, the schedule is going to change. You have the right be informed of such changes as soon as the programmers know about them. You have the right to exercise your business judgment by choosing among options for reducing scope so as to restore the original date. You have the right to cancel further development at any time and be left with a useful, working system that reflects your investment up to that date.

If you want these rights, there is a process outlined in the ExtremeProgrammingSummary which is designed to allow your programming team to hold up their end of this deal.

This is beautiful. Thanks for writing this. --WaldenMathews

This manifesto appears as the customer bill of rights in Chapter 2 (on Fear) of PlanningExtremeProgramming. That chapter also covers customer fears, developer fears, the customer bill of rights, and the programmer bill of rights --ArieVanDeursen

Discussion of this SoftwareManagementManifesto encouraged on SoftwareManagementManifestoDiscussion page.