QRCA: “Selling Qualitative Market Research to Agile Software Developers” by Luke Hohmann

Luke Hohmann's article in the Winter 2008 edition of QRCA Views (published by the Qualitative Research Consultants Association) is called "Tips on Selling Qualitative Market Research to Agile Software Developers."


"The hottest topic in the software-development community, Agile software
development is a new way of producing higher-quality software in record time. In
this article, I will provide a brief overview of Agile software development, explain why developers who embrace Agile practices are naturally predisposed to the benefits of qualitative research and offer
some tips on how you can better sell qualitative market research services to Agile software teams."

Download and read the entire article.

Comments

[Israel]

Good article, Luke!

Could you please elaborate on how the vendor and the co-development partners work effectively together? For example, what kind of joint infrastructure is required
to facilitate the intimate involvement you highlight?

Israel

[Luke Hohmann]

We find the best approach is to have the vendor lead the research process but explicitly include the client in the team. This structural approach is described in my book "Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play". In this model, the market research vendor leads the planning and facilitation efforts. The research team consists of the software company who hired the market researcher and the vendor. In terms of joint infrastructure, we find simple Google documents and/or documents shared via email to be sufficient for most projects.

Luke