A proposal for enhancing user-developer communication in large IT projects

A review of the literature showed that the probability of system success, i.e. user acceptance, system quality and system usage, can be increased by user-developer communication. So far most research on user participation focuses either on early or on late development phases. Especially large IT projects require increased participation, due to their high complexity. We believe that the step in software development when user requirements are translated (and thus interpreted) by developers into a technical specification (i.e. system requirements, architecture and models) is a critical one for user participation. In this step a lot of implicit decisions are taken, some of which should be communicated to the end users. Therefore, we want to create a method that enhances communication between users and developers during that step. We identified trigger points (i.e. changes on initial user requirements), and the granularity level on which to communicate with the end users. Also, representations of changes and adequate means of communication are discussed.