User involvement in software development processes

Costs of software development and deployment are decreasing due to numerous open source projects and novel Cloud-based services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), but competition increases due to lowering entry barriers. The need to bring developers closer to their customer becomes vital for success, especially involving users into the very early stages of software development. This allows detecting flaws of conceptual and design nature, minimize unnecessary development costs, and warrant relevance for customers. This paper presents the CloudTeams methodology and platform that aim to bridge this gap, based on an existing groupware system supporting the notion of collaborative software development.