Participatory Practices in the Software Lifecycle

The goal of this chapter is to help practitioners find methods, techniques, and procedures that they can use for participatory work, limited to methods and techniques that are relatively well-defined as courses of action suitable for adoption by practitioners without a great deal of additional research.

Abstract

Participatory design has become increasingly important over the past several decades. The goal of this chapter is to help practitioners find methods, techniques, and procedures that they can use for participatory work. For this purpose, the scope is limited to methods and techniques that are relatively well-defined as courses of action, suitable for adoption by practitioners without a great deal of additional research. The concern is to help practitioners introduce their participatory practices in conventional software lifecycles. The scope is restricted to approaches that are more than the use of a particular technology or the creation of a particular artifact or representation. This chapter begins with a brief introduction to participatory design, including some of the questions that have arisen concerning the boundaries of participatory practice. The chapter then describes a taxonomic space of participatory activities. Participatory practices may be useful at different points within the software lifecycle. The taxonomy may be used by readers to select one or more participatory practices to incorporate into software lifecycle activities.