Continuous improvement and validation with customer touchpoint model in software development

Abstract

Experimental-driven software development approach has gained momentum as a way to incrementally build and validate customer value. In-depth understanding of customer needs and reasons behind constantly changing requirements are essential for building successful software products. However, identifying, validating and reacting to these changes is often difficult and requires short iteration cycles and feedback from customers. This paper reports a 12-month case study conducted in an agile software team following a practical customer touchpoint (CTP) model for continuous improvement and validation. The objective of the study was to implement CTP into software team practices in order to determine what kind of effect it has on the development of a web application. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, an in-depth case study is presented that identifies the practices a CTP model should adopt when implemented in the software development process. The CTP model is then extended based on the identified recommendations. Second, the benefits and challenges of the extended CTP in software development are presented. The main benefits relate to learning, decision-making, innovation, co-creation and communication. The model had a positive impact on the software development process, but some challenges, such as stakeholder availability and customer value measurement, were identified.