End Users

END USER APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT Ephraim R. McLean, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems

Graduate School of Management University of California Los Angeles, California 90024

Abstract

Introduction

Although computers have been in general use for less than three decades, their impact on all aspects of modern life has been profound. The airplanes we ride on, the telephones we use, the cars we drive, these and many other essential activities depend in one way or another upon computers. Medicine also has had its share of such dramatic advances -- the CAT scanner being but one example.

In the health care field as in industry, the demand for new or expanded computer-based information systems far exceeds the capacity of present DP organizations to meet this demand. Assuming that a massive expansion of DP personnel is not feasible, one solution is to make existing computer professionals more productive; and efforts in this direction have met with a fair measure of success. Another approach is to allow end users to function as their own developers. In this way, the programmer "middle man" is eliminated and users can create and modify their own applications as the need arises. Not only does this help relieve the DP department's development workload, but it also helps lessen the maintenance load. However, to accomplish this transfer of application development from DP professional to DP user, certain key variables must be understood.

This paper discusses these variables, including the nature of the development process, a user classification scheme, the scope and orientation of systems, and the respective roles of design and maintenance in the applications development In particular, the misunderstood life cycle. nature of "maintenance" is explored, as well as the potential value of the use of application prototypes. Finally, there is a discussion of specific tools and techniques that may aid the end user in acting as application developer.

However, in...