I thought Lisa Kelly's article was excellent but it gave me a sense of deja vu (Super users replace programmers).

Many years ago I witnessed the rapid spread of user-developed spreadsheets. Some of these were developed by capable super users who were able to make Excel stand on its head and dance.

Unfortunately, the spreadsheets were passed on to less-super users who, over time, made small changes. Needless to say, they did not understand some of the logic, which of course was not documented, and introduced some interesting bugs.

This would not have been an issue, had the output from these spreadsheets not been given to the firm's clients. To compound the problem, some of these spreadsheets had become business-critical applications and the super users who originally developed them had long since left.

The solution was to allow super users to develop anything they like to make their jobs easier or more effective - but to restrict how it was used in one important way.

If output were to be given to a client or used for client-related work, it should be treated as any other software application development and subjected to the normal testing. With these caveats in place good user-developed software could be produced.

However, most busy professionals baulk at the imposition of these rules and the amount of time it would take to comply with them.

The solution would seem to be treating their development as a prototype and then, if it is to become a business application, turning it over to a development team to produce a robust, quality-assured version.

This approach allows super users to develop quick and cheap tools for their own use, while protecting the firm from potentially disastrous tinkering.

John Carroll