The Management of End-User Computing Documents: The Urgent Task of Keeping Track

Abstract

End User Computing, now spearheaded by microcomputer applications, has been growing and spreading in largely ad hoc ways. The orderly development of norms and conventions governing the generation, use, and control of the products of EUC is a matter of some urgency to educators, practitioners, users, and managements. The documentation requirements of all those memos, letters, reports, files, spreadsheet documents, and graphics outputs that users keep generating with the aid of personal computers are the focus of this article. This article points out certain historical trends, proposes simple patterns for meeting the documentation requirements of common micro-computer-generated documents, introduces two simple techniques for facilitating documentation, and discusses a series of recommendations for the successful completion of the documentation task.