Using two heads in practice

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.