A Review of User Involvement in Information System Projects

Abstract

In this study the authors provide a comprehensive literature survey of user involvement in information system projects. Specifically, the authors document and summarize user involvement by identifying studies that investigate user roles and activities, selection of users, type of communications used, and timing and level of their involvement. The authors review papers that employed various research methods and empirical studies whose models incorporated moderating and mediating factors, longitudinal studies, focus groups and case studies. The authors document the conditions favoring selected topics, models and metrics as well as highlight the contradicting results not supporting user involvement. This study constitutes an initial and systematic documentation of user involvement in information system projects and presents the opportunity to further improve the research in this subject area by leveraging findings and limitations of the current literature.