Kim Vasant, Partner at Visuel IT,
writes thesis on Interaction Design
at IT University of Copenhagen

Can visual IT specification improve the IT development process...

IT projects often fail in achieving goals set, budgets and deadlines. Lack of successful requirements specification and design phases causes rework and delay in projects. To counter these problems a new method – Visual IT-specification – has been developed, which integrates rapid prototyping in requirements specification.

Using the Soft Design Science Methodology (SDSM) method for developing and evaluating new IS methods, this paper goes through the design of Visual IT-specification and evaluates the method over multiple projects in two different organisations – a public sector company and a large Scandinavian bank.

The conclusion was that multiple benefits could be derived from using Visual IT-specification, namely: Reduction in development time, higher quality product and increased stakeholder involvement. Furthermore, the method works well in both waterfall and agile projects and supports projects that have multi-cultural resources and resources spread across several countries.

The promising results should inspire both researchers and IT-professionals interested in improving IT project success to investigate this method further so that other IT projects can experience similar benefits.