Joint application is a term originally used to describe a software development process pioneered and successfully deployed during the mid-1970s by the New York Telephone Company's Systems Development Center under the direction of Dan Gielan. Following a series of remarkably successful implementations of this methodology, Gielan lectured extensively in various forums on the methodology, its benefits and best practices. Arnie Lind, then a Senior Systems Engineer at IBM Canada in Regina, Saskatchewan created and named joint application design, in 1974. This was an improvement on existing methods, which entailed application developers spending months learning the specifics of a particular department or job function, and then developing an application for the function or department. In addition to significant development backlog delays, this process resulted in applications taking years to develop, and often not being fully accepted by the application users.