Feasibility of user-driven development in a corporate environment

A new software development methodology, called User-Driven Development, for custom or bespoke software development is proposed in this paper. The goal of this new development methodology is to incorporate users of software as the decision maker and main driving force in the software development process, without changing in-house methods of software developers. An important sub-goal of the methodology is not to introduce any new methods for software development but to re-use existing methods and techniques. Efforts are mostly focused on identifying possible issues which might arise and discuss how existing solutions can be used to ease integration of the methodology into existing software development environments. The paper also proposes an abstract model of a possible hierarchy which can be used in user and developer firms when incorporating User-Driven Development. The research examines, from a theoretical point of view, the feasibility of the methodology in a corporate environment. The main research question this paper tries to answer is whether this is a viable methodology, and what is needed of users and developers, respectively. After introducing User-Driven Development the paper looks how it affects some important aspects of software development.