Managing user expectations on software projects: Lessons from the trenches

A common risk on software projects is managing user expectations. Software project managers have the difficult job of balancing the needs and requirements of the users with the time and budget allocated to the project. If a software project is over-promised and/or under-delivered, then the users will not be as satisfied with the system, thus affecting its future use. In this paper, I explain why it is necessary to manage user expectations on software projects by exploring the relevant literature. Second, I report the findings from a series of interviews conducted with software project managers that asked for challenging situations in which user expectations were successfully and not-as-successfully managed. These findings identify practical advice for software project managers on how to manage user expectations and offer insights to researchers for future researc