The Organization of End User Development in an Accounting Company - End User Computing Challenges and Technologies: Emerging Tools and Applications - page 112

problems to the software house that develops VB,
including errors and adaptation tasks that could
not be solved in the Company, based on feedback
from the super users and their colleagues. The
adaptation tasks handled by the application coordi-
nator include adding new menus and new fields to
existing applications in order to evolve them into
domain-specific business solutions. The results are
referred to as screens and resemble spreadsheet
applications, and the method employed can be
seen as an instance of evolutionary application
development (Mørch, 1996). If new business
rules required new functionality in the software,
developers in the software house handled those
modifications by writing new program code.
A new solution typically starts with a request
from an accountant for a change to an existing
solution based on the specific needs of a client.
The simpler tailoring tasks are handled locally
by an office super user, but more complicated
tasks are referred to the application coordinator.
The application coordinator has enhanced access
rights to the system, allowing him to distribute
generally useful solutions to other offices as
well. Through a centralized application system,
a locally adapted business solution can be made
“global” (generalized) and therefore accessible to
everyone using VB. Due to the amount of work
required to create specialized solutions, the ap-
plication coordinator has gradually given access
rights to some of the other super users as well so
that they can help him to speed up the process.
These super users evolved into the role of local
developer because they showed more interest than
the average super users in creating solutions with
the tailoring tools in VB. These local developers
collaborate closely with the other super users in
their office, who are in a similar position, and
with the application coordinator.

the visma business (vb)
application

Visma Business is a complex accounting applica-
tion, consisting of several modules, providing a
superset of the functionality of the old systems.
This is why we call it a generic system (Bansler
& Havn, 1994; Mørch, 1996, 2003) and it is an ex-
ample of what we above referred to as over-design,
providing a superset of required functionality. On
a daily basis, much of the generic system is not
used, since it includes too much information for
any one accountant. The range of possible ways
of doing things makes it very frustrating to learn.
There are many functions and possibilities and
only a few users can employ them all. Actually,
95% of the time spent in VB is spent in a few ac-
counting modules. In addition, VB comes with a
small set of business solutions for client-specific
tasks available for everyone, and a set of tailoring
tools (referred to as design mode) to create new
specialized business solutions, to modify existing
solutions, and to remove superfluous (un-needed)
functionality. The initial configuration of VB is
shown in Figure 2.
The business solutions are normally tailored
for specific offices, depending on the clients
the offices do business with. So even though
VB starts as a generic application, end users
can make changes and tailor it to their use. The
changes are made locally, but those found to have
companywide application could also be enabled
“globally” by the application coordinator, as pre-
viously described, hence making them available
for everyone. Possible changes include choosing
which functions to make available and modifying
or creating menus and fields. Much of this activity
is similar to creating spreadsheets (see Figure 3).
In fact, VB is closely related to the spreadsheet
concept and can actually be connected with Excel
sheets. New functionality can be defined in Excel
cells and linked to VB, making them accessible
through VB screens. Access to the tailoring tools
is accomplished by switching to a design mode ,