SAFe – Customer

Nowadays, customers are the most important entities in the business world. Since the world is becoming highly competitive, customer will serves as the external and internal part of an organization that continuously increases their demands. Most of them want some options, quick service, better solutions, and more valuable products that will meet all of their needs with great satisfactions.
Integrating the customer as the integral to the Lean –Agile Solution is the best way to have better development since you consider them as part of your value stream. Therefore, they should not be separable from process and should work closely and frequently with the product and solution management and other kinds of stakeholders that will help to shape the economic framework, vision and solution intent. Customers have strong influence to define and prioritize solutions and can actively participate to the process improvement, demos, and planning.
Customers are considered as integral part of the lean agile development that plays vital role for SAFe and at the same time part of value stream. The support for the agile principles and lean are continuously participating to the evolutions, demonstrations, planning and definition of solutions that is very important to the success of every execution.
In some cases, customers are considered as internal while others are external. On the other hand, customers are the largest class to the economic buyers wherein the system builder needs to understand and aggregate the requirements for some general case and fill the broad market that needs the adequate internal proxy to the development.
So no matter what kind of customers you have for your business are, there is a need for you to get engage them in your entire agile development solutions. They are require to participate to the proxy or person by fulfilling the general responsibilities like:
• Participate in UAT, beta testing and other forms of validation for best solutions
• Participate similar to business owner when it comes to PI planning
• Review the financial and technical status of solutions
• Attend system demo that can help to evaluate for the increment solutions
• Communicate with economic logic and help to create validate assumptions to the economic framework
• Participate in workshops and remove the systemic impediments
• Collaborate to manage the time, scope and other constraints regarding solution and product management
• Interact with subject matter and expertise at time of workshops
• Define the milestones, releases and roadmaps
The engagement of the customer as end-user can drives the success of agile. Since the agile development is considered as dependent in high degree of engagement from their customers there are higher stage models are being assume. However, the engagement here is different because serves as the base from the solution builder in which the building is the general solutions and use to sell to numerous customers. It is also specifically build for customers that are base from their specifications.
Having this kind of solutions, it helps to reduce the aspect of win – lose regarding the relationship to the customer and system builder and receives continuous flow for the business.

— Slimane Zouggari