User involvement in software development. A critical analysis of design thinking methods in enterprise software development process. The case study of Volkswagen Group IT

This thesis presents an on site research conducted in the Information Technology department of the global automotive enterprise Volkswagen AG. The research aims to understand the possible benefits rising from the involvement of end-users in the development of in-house enterprise software applications, throughout the adoption of selected design thinking methods. The experience that employees, here meant as users, have with enterprise software applications is crucial for their satisfaction and productivity. As far as the importance of user involvement in software development process has been validated by literature, in this thesis was research whether the company analyzed has the right framework to support these issues. In this scenario the user centeredness quality of Design Thinking, and its set of methods, have been adopted to overcome the gaps revealed by the research regarding the user involvement. The enterprise software application “EDE”, was selected as a case study to conduct a critical investigation about the added values that the adoption of design thinking could bring to the software development process. The project is characterized by the development and execution of a strategically designed process, where a testing loop of research-action was repeated to experiment together with the end-users. The result of this research would like to be an input for the company Volkswagen Group IT, to understand the possible opportunities that design thinking could bring to the company, in order to adopt its process and methods and add it to the traditional approaches in software development.