Around the world we rely on #spreadsheets to manage projects & assemble/analyse data... so the news that research suggests 90% of spreadsheets over 150 lines contain one major error.
Not only that, while easy to make, such errors are hard(er) to find.
As so often, what seems like a technical issue of little major consequence, as Simon Thorne (Cardiff MU) explores here actually they can be the root of all sorts of significant problems.
We need to be clearer about them!
@ChrisMayLA6 Computer Programmer here. I've seen millions written off when spreadsheets are used as proxies for proper accounting practices. I've seen valuable analysts waste half their hours every month cutting-and-pasting data b'twn sheets. I've seen development teams struggle to place complex, fragile, error-prone formulas into Excel in VBA all because the project leads wouldn't tell the users to sit down when they demanded a spreadsheet. Training? Standardisation? Don't make me laugh.
The claims dept of a well known insurance company had a guy working in the department who was a bit of an amateur wizard with Excel and had produced more than 100 spreadsheets for various purposes, for his dept. Unfortunately, the functioning of the claims dept had come to be totally dependent on these damned spreadsheets which were undocumented and developed to no proper standards. Finally, the day came when the developer reached retiring age and the IT dept were asked to take over all these spreadsheets for maintenance and update. The IT dept said "sure - that will be £25,000 per spreadsheet" which came to substantially more than the whole IT budget (software and hardware) for that dept!
@Paulos_the_fog @boggin @ChrisMayLA6
Not mine, but raw truth.
@Paulos_the_fog @boggin @ChrisMayLA6
It would, of course, be remiss of me not to mention that if you recognise this problem in your own organisation and want to do something about it, I may be able to help.
https://www.aru.ac.uk/study/degree-apprenticeships/apprentice/our-courses/data-science
@Ruskin_Marc @boggin @ChrisMayLA6
I'd love to do one of those data apprenticeships but I'm 73 living overseas and retired so I very much doubt if it would be open to me!
@Paulos_the_fog @boggin @ChrisMayLA6 Your age would not be a barrier, to-date my oldest apprentice enjoyed his 60th birthday in the year he graduated, but, sadly, the living aborad part does put the kybosh on that plan, as funding is only available for our #apprentices whose work is >50% in England.