During the game, the whole team switches between developer and customer roles. The coach emphasizes this fact by displaying a banner, which reads, "We are the customer" or "We are the developers." If the players must switch roles, even briefly (for example, when they ask for more stories from the customers), the coach explicitly makes them switch roles. This makes it clear that the customer and developer roles are distinct. Each shares some part of the responsibility to succeed. Both have well-defined tasks. Developers should never make customer decisions; customers should never make developer decisions. Switching roles lets everybody experience all aspects of the cooperative game of software development. Developers and customers experience what "the other side" does during a project. This increases the respect each group has for the work of the others. |