12. Role of the user

The key point of the System Life Cycle Process is that it is the people who are actually going to use the system who get a say in how it going to work.

They are called the 'user'.

This does sound like common sense but an amazing number of projects are carried out without any regard to what the user actually wants - assumptions are made. And this is one of the key reasons why a project fails.

This is the purpose of the 'User Requirement' document. The document tries to:

1. Eliminate misunderstandings
2. Reduce errors
3. Gain user agreement

The way it works is that the system analyst tries to understand what the user needs of the system. The analyst then sets this out in a non-technical user requirement document. He may use a number of diagrams and charts within the document to explain his understanding of their needs.

Users are then invited to comment on the document and provide feedback to improve upon it.

There may be several iterations of the User Requirements Document as users further explain to the analyst what they need. Getting it right the first time is a rare thing!

This process continues until the user agrees that the system will do the job.

This is called the 'sign-off'. It is saying that the user buys into the project, that they are confident that the project will do the job.

Complications
This sounds simple, so why do project fail so often? In terms of the user it may be because

1. They are not the right user! For instance if it is a system that the public need to use then have all the types of customers been included? Is it too complicated for some people or too long-winded for others?

2. User requirement change within the lifetime of the project. This is a major problem as large projects have a habit of becoming more and more complicated as people want it to do more and more things. Sometimes this is called 'mission creep'.