An ethnographic study of distributed problem solving in spreadsheet development

1 January 1990

proceedings article
Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

p. 197-208
https://doi.org/10.1145/99332.99355

Abstract

In contrast to the common view of spreadsheets as “single-user” programs, we have found that spreadsheets offer surprisingly strong support for cooperative development of a wide variety of applications. Ethnographic interviews with spreadsheet users showed that nearly all of the spreadsheets used in the work environments studied were the result of collaborative work by people with different levels of programming and domain expertise. Cooperation among spreadsheet users was spontaneous and casual; users activated existing informal social networks to initiate collaboration.

Keywords

ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY
DIFFERENT LEVEL
WORK ENVIRONMENT
COMMON VIEW
STRONG SUPPORT
SPREADSHEET USER
DOMAIN EXPERTISE
COLLABORATIVE WORK
SPREADSHEET DEVELOPMENT
COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT
INFORMAL SOCIAL NETWORK
ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEW
SOCIAL NETWORK

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