One critical decision that a project team makes is not ‘if’ to work with customers, but how. We look at customer involvement in three degrees: casual, involved, and committed. Committed customer partners are the crown jewels of exchanging relationship currency with your customer. 

Casual Partners

The most common reason to disclose an unreleased project to a customer is to help them to feel good about their current purchases. In general, they will be asked to treat the information with discretion and given an abbreviated 15 minute version of a product pitch. The presentation is often verbal (not PowerPoint) and they are usually not provided written copies. These meetings are essentially sales tools as the feedback from the customers, while important, is not based on in-depth knowledge of the product, market, and tradeoffs that are being made during the project.

Involved Partners

Involved partners hear an in-depth pitch, perhaps in a meeting lasting a day or two and probably repeated every few months. Since they have signed a light-weight non-disclosure agreement, they are told most details of the features and functions of the product along with the benefits that they are expected to enjoy. At times, consultants or outside design review teams may fill part of this role, although the majority of the team should be customers.

These partners may have access to marketing and engineering specifications. This allows them to review the materials ahead of the meeting. Their feedback is more thoughtful than with Casual Partners, and will likely lead to dialog and debate regarding the product tradeoffs and decisions that the development team has made.

A great idea is to have these meetings with more than one customer at a time; more like a customer advisory group. Advantages to this including hearing the customers debate each other, cost and time efficiency for the development team, and greater opportunity for shared learning.

Sound a little frightening to have your customers together in one room?  If so, ask yourself why. I have done this with many teams on many occasions and the gains have always outweighed the small numbers of problems that developed.

Committed Partners

These customers operate as part-time team members. They are likely to reside in the development teams’ facility, have access to all project documents excepting financials. Although trust is the primary currency of the relationship, they will have signed a comprehensive non-disclosure agreement.

They will have full access to the team members; attend team meetings, and participate in specification and design reviews. They may have tasks assigned in the project management plan.

Their feedback is invaluable as they can actively participate in the real-time development process. They provide developers with instant-access to trusted customer opinion and can also leverage the Committed Partner’s contacts back to their home location to get opinion on topics that are beyond their personal scope.

There are many details to work out in order to build a Committed Partner arrangement, but the results can be spectacular.

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