Spreadsheet End User Development and Knowledge Management

Abstract

In the early days of computers, expertise was needed in order to use computers. As IT tools have become more powerful and user friendly, more and more people have been able to use computers and programs as tools when carrying out working tasks. Nowadays, it is possible for people without special IT training to develop Information Systems (IS) that only IT specialists could have done some years ago. In this paper End User Development (EUD) using a Spreadsheet Program (SP) is discussed from a knowledge management perspective. EUD can be a part of an organization’s effort to take advantage of existing, often tacit, knowledge or creating new knowledge. An end user is a person who acts both as a user and a systems developer. A typical feature of an end user is that he has a good (often unique) knowledge of the business and the work related to the IS in question, which is called the User Developed Application. It is the combination of these two sorts of knowledge which is the key to EUD as knowledge management. The aim of this of this chapter is to relate EUD to knowledge management and, specifically, to describe how tacit knowledge can be audited when end users develop spreadsheet systems for their own domain of expertise. The main source is a set of qualitative case studies carried out between 1995 and 2005. (Avdic, 1999; Westin, Avdic & Roberts, 2005)