A Social Process Model of User-Analyst Relationships

The development of an information system is a social process involving users and systems analysts, carried out in an organizational setting. This paper presents a process model of user-analyst relationships to guide research into the social dynamics of system development. The model identifies antecedent conditions, encounters, episodes, and outcomes over the course of a project. The model asserts that established relationships between analysts and users will persist unless critical encounters change the trajectory of the project. By conceiving of systems development as a series of encounters and episodes, researchers may identify critical encounters and study the connections between preceding events and their consequences. Practitioners may use the model to diagnose problems and to enact critical encounters that move a project in a different direction. The descriptive and predictive capacities of the process model are illustrated with two case studies.