End users need to have a voice throughout development. The first and possibly most important requirement in gaining user adoption is to give your end users a voice. Many businesses have embraced an approach where the business pays for new technology, thus giving them the ultimate voice, the yay or nay decision. While this is an effective way to increase user adoption from the onset, it also adds additional issues preventing what may be a best fit for the company and often creates a void where enterprise-wide solutions would best reside.
A more sensible way then to give your users a voice might be to provide a weekly vent session. When working at the large health insurance company, we provided weekly user meetings while undergoing our migration. As I mentioned, many of the people we were migrating had been working with the old technology for over 10 years, and needless to say, were very reluctant to give it up. By providing them an outlet...