Recently I realized that in real-life communication there is quite a lot of ambiguity between the terms “Customer”, “Client” and “User”. One of these sudden realizations that are always there with you on a daily basis, but you suddenly stop and think about it. And you, uhm, suddenly *realize* it on a conscious level.
Anyway, we have three different terms. Customer, Client and User.
From a top-level perspective, it looks fine. We have, say, Business Inc. that wants to present a new B2C product for their customers, and for them it is all pretty understandable: there are only Customers that’s going to use the app, and no one else.
For the product development team, however, their Client is the marketing department that defines what the product should do and how it should work. Sometimes developers even start to think that this specific guy from marketing, with his fancy business vision, is the actual
Customer. After all, he’s our Product Owner, right? The person whose sole purpose is to represent the interest of the darn Customer! Proxy Customer. Just Customer. And at the same time he’s our main Client. Hmm..
The only term that stays unambiguous is “User”. Yes, the person who has to use the end result of our development. The person who is going to pay money for it. In this case — the Actual Customer.
Now think about a more complex case. Business Inc. decides to outsource an app development to IT Technology Labs, LLC. And suddenly it becomes even more confusing.
For Mitch, the Portfolio Manager in IT Tech Labs, his Client is Business Inc. And their specific representative, Jo, who is personally responsible for the end result. And Jo’s boss, Ed, who is responsible for budgets and ROI. Mitch’s Client is.. uhm.. Business Inc. Mitch’s Users are those little guys intending to buy the app. As if he ever thinks about them, right?
For the Project Manager Joel, the Customer is still Business Inc., but he only knows about Jo. Ed is above Joel’s level, and only communicates with Mitch. Joel’s Customer is either Mitch or Jo, depending on how things are running inside IT Tech Labs. Joel’s User is the same little guy using the app. Whoever that is.
And for Ben, the Product Owner from IT Tech Labs the Client AND the Customer is Jo. Personally. Ben represents Jo’s best interest, to make sure the app is developed with best interest in mind.
End User’s best interest, proxied by Business Inc, proxied by Jo, is now proxied by Ben to the Development Team.
Darn.
And then there are B2B products, where the End User might not be the End Customer. User does use the product, but it’s the company that is paying for it — thus the company is the Customer.
One might argue that my example shows “unagile” business outsourcing to “unagile” supplier, who works with “unagile” processes.
Alas, “Customer” mentioned in Agile Manifesto is actually Client. Read the Twelve Principles. The Customer there is someone who orders software development. The sponsor. The Client. Oh, and there is a User, actually. Only mentioned once.
One might argue that the Customer is very well defined by Scrum. Alas, it is not. Even more so — in Scrum guide 2017 the Customer is mentioned exactly zero times. So does the Client. And User is only mentioned once.. oh, wait, not the End User. The Scrum User.
So it’s kind of saddening, but it looks like in all these hype and talks about being Agile, working by Scrum and spitting on Waterfall’s ever dead body, everyone forgot about Customers and Users. Yet, everyone seems to know everything about pleasing the Client.
Pleasing with hype and talks about being Agile, as an example..
PS I googled about this topic, and it looks like this is a well-known issue. It was even asked about, argued and answered multiple times. Sometimes differently.
Totally fine with me. The more people know that this issue does exist, the better it will be for the End User.
Right?