Post-deployment data: A recipe for satisfying knowledge needs in software development?

In the field of improving software processes, one of the clear trends has been the ever tighter engagement of end users in the software development process. This is demonstrated by the shift from Agile processes to Continuous Deployment, which requires more rapid ways to validate the developed software and its value than is possible with traditional communication mechanisms and methods, such as face to face conversations with customers. While post-deployment data has been used for years as an extra data source - companies like Microsoft and Intuit have moved a few steps further from that already - we believe that there are numerous uncovered ways of taking advantage of post-deployment data in software development. In this paper, we study how automatically collected post-deployment data could be used for responding to knowledge needs of software development teams. The paper builds on data collected from a number of companies operating in Finland using a questionnaire study. The focus of questionnaire study was to approach post-deployment data - especially usage data - as means of getting information to support understanding of customer and end users.