End User Development (EUD) aims at the enabling of end users to adapt, modify or extend software and has become an important keyword for software designers. Discussing premises for the success of EUD, several authors have stated that processes of knowledge development and diffusion play an important role. Current research discusses such Knowledge-Management issues mostly in the client organization. But if we want to bring an End User perspective into design practice, we have to take into account how producers manage their costumerrelated knowledge and bring it into action. Therefore, the study presented here describes the results of a related Business Ethnography, which was carried out in a small enterprise of the German software branch. The paper explains how this ethnographic action research helped to identify practices, potentials and problems in the enterprise to acquire, secure and use knowledge about the end users of its products. Preliminary findings demonstrate that EUD is not only a technical, but also a Knowledge-Management challenge for software enterprises.
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Nett, B., Meurer, J., Stevens, G. (2008). Knowledge Management-in-action in an EUD-oriented Software Enterprise. In: Ackerman, M., Dieng-Kuntz, R., Simone, C., Wulf, V. (eds) Knowledge Management In Action. IFIP WCC TC12 2008. IFIP – The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 270. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09659-9_10
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