What all clients should know

Aral Balkan made a nice post on what all CEO’S should know and act on.

His three main points:

• Use an agile development methodology such as eXtreme Programming (XP) and work in iterations.
• Use a user-centered development process. Your teams must capture quantifiable usability requirements and you must budget to cover usability testing in every iteration of development.
• Use software design patterns in the architecture of your applications to provide a common high-level language for your developers and take advantage of time-tested solutions to common problems.

Arals memo to ceo’s can be found here: link

I would like to add some points to this (some are aimed at the client):

• Invest in professionals: If you can not get the right people to do the project. Don’t do the project
• Be allies with the software team. Trust them, share knowledge, be available for questions.
• Have realistic wishes. Developers can make almost anything, the only problem is that it costs a lot of time. Know what you absolutely want, and be prepared to not get everything you wish for.