The integration of user-centred design and Agile development is becoming increasingly common in companies and appears promising. However, it may also present some critical points, or communication breakdowns, such as a variable interpretation of user involvement, a mismatch in the value of documentation, and a misalignment in iterations. We refine these themes, emerging from both literature and previous fieldwork, by analysing a case study performed in an IT company that adopts both software engineering approaches, and we further extend the framework with a new theme related to task ownership. We argue that communication breakdowns can become focal points to drive action and decision for establishing an organisational context acknowledging the value of user involvement: to this end, we suggest the adoption of design thinking and the active engagement of the customer in embracing its values. communication breakdowns can become focal points to support action and decision in companies adopting UCD and Agile; moreover, we argue that possible solutions to these issues need to be backed by a supportive organisational culture that recognises the value of user contribution and actively endorses it with the customer. User-centred design (UCD) is an umbrella term used to denote a set of techniques, methods, procedures that places the user at the centre of an iterative design process [25] . The benefits of involving users in systems design are widely acknowledged [1, 14, 16, 18] : they include improved quality and acceptance of the system [11] , and cost saving, since unnecessary features or critical usability issues are spotted early in the development process [23] . In recent years, there have been several attempts at integrating UCD with Agile software development, as witnessed for instance by the literature reviews in [15, 26] . Despite the large common ground that the two approaches share, there are at least three themes on which their perspectives diverge [5]: we frame these themes by drawing on the concept of communication breakdown, that is a "disruption that occurs when previously successful work practices fail, or changes in the work situation (new work-group, new technology, policy, etc.) nullify specific work practices or routines of the organizational actors and there are no ready-at-hand recovery strategies" [4] . Although originally discussed with respect to global software development, we believe that this concept can support a reflection on the synthesis of different software engineering approaches: we argue, in fact, that it refers to issues occurring at "work practice level" that are due to an "underdeveloped shared context of meaning" [4] , which could also be interpreted as the incomplete establishment of a common ground [10] between designers and developers of the same company. The three communication breakdowns in the integration of UCD and Agile were formalised during a field study carried out within the Smart Campus project [5] , where UCD and Scrum were integrated in a process of mobile application development for a community of users, namely students of the University of Trento campus. The goal of this R&D project was to create an ecosystem fostering students' active participation in the design and development of mobile services for their own campus [12] ; more details about the aims and results of the project can be found in [6, 12, 34] . In the following, we will illustrate the three communication breakdowns identified by drawing on the literature review that supported the findings of the Smart Campus field study. User Involvement. In UCD, user involvement can range from informative, to consultative, to participative [11] . In Agile instead, the emphasis is rather put on the customer [1], who acts as a representative of users, but may or may not have direct and regular contact with them [27, 28] , to the point that some authors question the extent of such representativeness [30] and others recommend that the customer role is supported by members of the project team [9] .
We also point out, however, that also the customer needs to be supportive of the integration of UCD and Agile, allowing for a suitable design to be researched REF and for adequate access to users.
Focal Points for a More User-Centred Agile Development
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