Background in End-User Software Engineering
Traditional SE activities related to EUSE in the field of spreadsheets, including requirements,
design and specification, reuse, testing and verification, debugging and
maintenance, are introduced and discussed in Ko et al. [2009, 2011] and Burnett et al.
[2003]. The implementation activity is discussed in Sutcliffe and Mehandjiev [2004],
Kelleher and Pausch [2005], and Lieberman et al. [2006]. These studies have served
as the basis for our web-centred EUSE approach. Additionally, most EUSE research
sets out to be independent of purpose, even though the use and development of enduser
programs depend largely on the purpose for which they are built [Ko et al. 2009].
Regarding this point, we believe that EUSE for the web cannot be conceived as being
exactly the same as for other types of office applications like spreadsheets.
Table I summarizes the activities documented to date in EUSE research, the problems
they pose and problem-solving approaches.
There is no specific proposal of a defined lifecycle, containing a formalized schedule
of activities, tasks, artefact creations, etc. in the EUSE field. In this article, we propose
a specific lifecycle, based on traditional SE activities but tailored to the problems of
web end users. To solve the problems that end users will face in each activity, we use
a framework providing guidance for end users that exploits most of the ideas specified
in Table I.