The development of electronic commerce (EC) systems is subject to different conditions than that of conventional software systems. Consequently, software development processes used for conventional systems to date need to be adapted to these new conditions. This includes the introduction of new activities to the development process and the removal of others. In addition, the roles involved in the development process, their tasks, qualifications and the software tools used by them, are different to other processes. An adapted process must cope with important idiosyncrasies of EC system development: EC systems typically have a high degree of interaction, which makes factors like ergonomics, didactics and psychology especially important in the development of user interfaces. Typically, they also have a high degree of integration with existing software systems such as legacy or groupware systems. Integration techniques have to be selected systematically in order not to endanger the whole software development process. Furthermore, the approach to the development of EC systems should take into account the "time-to-market" factor and allow development time reduction while retaining quality. This paper introduces and describes an adapted software development process for EC systems and its special features using the development of an EC portal system as an example.
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