The title of my discussion, since it is shortened due to space limitation, is “an ounce of communication worth a ton of documentation,” and I may add and “hours of user involvement. There is a triangle of issues here: documentation, user involvement, and communication. Actually, CMMI and agile methods (currently two major approaches to software development), are stressing documentation and user involvement, respectively, but get short of emphasizing communication. Applying either of the two in the real world it is different matter. Users may get involved and systems may get documented, but communication may not result from both of these activities. Communication is a two-way street between IT and users and a communication gap does exist between these two worlds. And until both parties make a sincere effort to communicate with each other, systems will continue to fail and users will continue to be unsatisfied. The major factor that will lead to effective communication is understanding the language used in communication. IT must understand the business, and users must be computer literates. It requires concerted effort from both sides to come to an agreement, that the system’s owner eventually are the users not IT departments. Back to theme of the discussion: An IT department may spend hours and hours on preparing and perfecting documentation, but how good such documentation will be if users cannot understand it and cannot reflect on it. If am pressured for time, Iwill sacrifice documentation preparation time for the time I could spent with users explaining system features and getting personal feedback from them. It means that both documentation and user involvement are only means to achieving communication and not an end by themselves.