Agile Software Development: A local example of Customer Intimacy Strategy

You all know Mycampus.pk. That's the example i want to quote. Their customer-intimacy (C.I.) goes into the very process project development they do for their customers, spread all across the globe. Here's is what mr. Abidoon Nadeem has to say about their agile software methodology, which illustrate C.I. strategy:

"Agile software development methodology is a movement that was started I think 20 years ago against the traditional software development which really suite the current kind of development that people do today. I’d say that ASD is much more natural, it comes much more naturally. It’s a lot more cost effective and time effective. In ASD you don’t lock the scope; you assume … the point is that customer is not perfect. The spec he gave you initially is going to change. When he actually uses, that is very different from everything that he had in his head. You need to give him room and accommodate the changes. ASD let’s you don’t do that. It doesn’t lock for the entire process. It does lock however for 10-11 days. Locking is important because without it developers can’t work. Development is kind of a map. If you play with the variables, everything is going to change. You’ve to lock to ensure that certain set of features is done in a certain amount of time. You start, take initial spec, do iterations, and then you show it to the customer. The customer is asked to use it, they give you feedback, and then you put it in the next iterations. Lock for 10-11 days and then show it to the customer. The customer feels that you’re working on what he gave you [...]. It is like a building being construction which they can actually see the construction happening, where they can make changes.

ASD ensures quality: they make you test the application a lot. Even while you’re developing you’re testing. Then in ASD is this concept of “Pair Programming” in which 2 persons sit on 1 computer. One person is driver and the other is programmer/coder. When they work together they can code much better and much faster. It seems as if it’s a very expensive thing […]. But it ends up saving you time and money. And. The bugs you’ve are not silly bugs. The bugs, scenarios are really sophisticated. Such a scenario may never occur 95% of times. It basically turns developers into testers."