Buyers of software today has to point out the general direction of the desired solution, a set of goals that must be accomplished and strategic limitations when it comes to platforms and interactivity with other systems. But no more than that before development starts.

During the development, the buyer needs to allocate resources to constantly tweak the requirements and this suddenly puts one or more "worker"-class employees in a very important situation as the decision making can no longer go on for weeks with correspondence and meetings with top management.

Extreme Programming dictates two-week cycles where requirements are implemented. When the two weeks are up, participants on a meeting evaluate the results and decide what should be the requirements for the next two weeks and so on. There is no time for slow, individual correspondence with every interessee.

Requirements for buying agile development

In order to successfully buy agile development:

1. Management needs to delegate decision authority to competent project managers


2. Project managers need active participation in all steps in the development


3. Project managers need to be in sync with the future end users


4. Resources must be allocated to answer questions from the developers


5. Developing and buying organisations must have a high level of communication