Phlip:
During the planning game, you review last week's finished stories, and they inspire you to write some new cards, to edit some cards, and to toss some cards. Then you (the Onsite Customer) re-sort all the cards, and draw off the top batch for the next week. But another input into this system that affects the planning game - the competition. The USA occupied Iraq using an effective new battle technique. In traditional advances, you send a diversionary force against one of your enemies flanks, draw them that way, then send your main force against their other flank. Modern soldiers, with cell-phones and such, follow a more agile approach. You simply send two forks of your forces, probing towards both flanks. You use sensitive algorithms to detect the defending commander's decision which flank to defend. If you can rapidly turn one advance into the diversion, and the other into the main attack, you will soon collapse the opposition's ability to effectively make decisions. Agile onsite customers can play this card too. If you detect your competition's marching orders, in real-time (using either sensitive algorithms, good-old-fashioned industrial espionage, or just reading their self-congratulatory Web site), you can then request iteration features which provide the minimum amount of code needed to start your project towards blocking the competition's advance. This technique will, again, collapse the competition's ability to make decisions. Or convince them to hire an XP coach or three. So either way it's a win-win-win for us! ;-)
Steven’s reply: :-)
Or you could follow the agile strategy that Microsoft pioneered - announcing products with your competitions' features before you even start implementing them.