Infrastructuring when you don't - End-user development and organizational infrastructure

Abstract

Technologies promoting End-User Development enable domain experts to adjust and develop tools to fit with their specific work practice and thus to be efficient with respect to their professional tasks. In today's organizations, however, single applications become part of organizational infrastructures. Such infrastructures enable integration between different applications and tasks but, at the same time, introduce constraints to ensure interoperability. How can the ad vantages of End-User Development be kept without jeopardizing the integration between different applications? The article presents an empirical study on End-User Development in the context of the development of an organizational IT infrastructure. Based on the analysis of the empirical material we discuss the challenges the infrastructure context provides for End-User Development. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.