A common difficulty in any service industry is a mutually demeaning attitude between
the service provider and user. The more continual the service, the greater the attitude
tends to become. In application system development, the user attitude is an
expectation that developers should automatically understand the difficulties of the user,
while the developer attitude is that the users' jobs are only difficult because of the users
performing them. As a result, new applications are developed with many assumptions
that are never confirmed before implementation.
In the early days of application systems, there was a specific role for someone from the
development team to bridge the assumption gap between the user and the developer.
Over time however, the attitudes of the users and developers pushed the role of the
systems analyst first into technology and then into obsolescence. Now, with the failure
of ever more applications, the role is again added by the users as a business systems
analyst to solidify functionality and user interfaces before technology becomes
involved.
MCS can establish a client application development organization and process that promotes
cooperation between developers and users and the implementation of effective systems.
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