Authors
Fredrik Karlsson
Abstract
Group development has been proposed as a way of improving quality in end user development.
Earlier experiments have shown promising results on error rates. However, these studies have been carried out on students, often, in laboratory settings.
This study reports on a field experiment on group development during spreadsheeting. Experienced business managers have been working alone (monads) and in groups of two (dyads), solving a context specific problem.
The results show that dyads made 36% fewer errors than monads. Hence, the results verify earlier findings and that group development can be recommended as a technique to include in end user development processes – to improve quality.
Sample
The results show that group development – pair programming – reduces error rates.
The number of incorrect spreadsheets dropped by 21% when solving the problem in groups of two. The mean cell error rate (CER) fell by 36% (from 3.6% to 2.3%), indicating improved quality.
Publication
2008, International Conference on Software Engineering, January, pages 43-47
