13.8 Person Responsible for Customer Contact

The person responsible for customer contact ensures that customer cooperation is satisfactory according to contract. Often the project manager carries this responsibility; only in a large project would a special person be assigned this responsibility.

This person must understand the customer's requirements for configuration management and make sure they're fulfilled, which demands a talent for cooperation. The borderlines between configuration management of the project and of the customer must be clear, as well as how these lines may be crossed if necessary. This person's job may concern how event registrations are handled during the course of development or how project material is transferred to the customer's configuration management at delivery.

To be able to cooperate with the customer about configuration management, this person must have good knowledge of the principles of configuration management generally and as it's carried out in the company and the project. The types of activities depend on how cooperation with the customer takes place (closely or loosely). Depending on the contract, activities typically include

• Producing documentation to fulfill the customer's configuration management requirements

• Receiving and possibly performing quality assurance on deliveries from the customer, such as user requirement specifications, and possibly performing internal configuration management on them

• Possibly forwarding event registrations to the customer

• Receiving event registrations from the customer, such as in connection with a review of documentation or with early user or acceptance tests

References

More details about relevant subjects may be found in Chapters 14Customer and 20Multiple Stakeholders.