2 Client, Customer and other Stakeholders

2a. The client is the person/s paying for the development, and owner of the delivered system.

Content

This item must give the name of the client. It is permissible to have several names, but more than three negates the point.

Motivation

The client has the final acceptance of the system, and thus must be satisfied with the system as delivered. Where the system is being developed for in-house consumption, the roles of the client and the customer may be filled by the same person. If you cannot find a name for your client, then perhaps you should not be building the product.

Considerations

Sometimes, when building a package or a product for external users, the client is the marketing department. In this case, a person from the marketing department must be named as the client.

2b. The customer is the person/s who will buy the product from the client.

Content

The name of the person who plays the role of the customer for the product. In the case of in house development the roles of the client and the customer are often played by the same person. In the case of the development of a mass market product there may be several people playing the role of customer. In the case of a product that is being developed for an international market, there might be a different customer (or customer profile) in each country.

Motivation

The customer role is ultimately responsible for deciding whether or not to buy the product from the client. The product must be built to satisfy the aims of the customer/s whilst conforming to the constraints of the client. Even if the customer/s are people who work for another part of the client's organization, they might still have the authority to decide whether or not to invest budget in the new product.

2c. Other stakeholders

Content

The roles and (if possible) names of other people and organizations who are affected by the product or whose input is needed in order to build the product.

Examples of stakeholders include:

Users (detailed in section 3)

Sponsor

Testers

Business Analysts

Technology Experts

System Designers

Marketing Experts

Legal Experts

Domain Experts

Usability Experts

Representatives of external associations

For each type of stakeholder identify:

o Stakeholder Identification (some combination of role/job title, person name, organisation name),

o Knowledge needed by the project,

o Necessary degree of involvement for that stakeholder/knowledge combination,

o Degree of influence for that stakeholder/knowledge combination,

o Agreement on how to address conflict between stakeholders who have an interest in the same knowledge

Motivation

Failure to recognize stakeholders results in missing requirements.