A comparative case study on clients participation in a ‘traditional’ and in an agile software company

Agile literature suggests that the active and continuous participation and involvement of the clients throughout the project is key to building the right product and raise users’ satisfaction. However, relatively little research has been made on comparing what makes clients happy in ‘traditional’ companies that use planed-driven processes and in agile companies. In turn, it’s hard to collect and evaluate evidence in favor of either settings. This paper fills in this gap and compares two software development companies in a Nord-European country in respect to client participation and its impact on the clients’ satisfaction with the project. One of the companies is agile by its design while the other follows a ‘traditional’ software development approach. Our study suggests that active clients’ participation is not an exclusive attribute of agile projects and that it can be successfully integrated (and implemented) in a ‘traditional’ project as well. Further, the study shows that by involving clients, software companies have the chance to get higher customer satisfaction, regardless whether or not they implement agile software development processes. Although our study is not quantitative in nature, we think that it is indicative about the impact of the factor “client’s participation‿ on the client’s satisfaction.