Spreadsheats
There is one thing about business that I don’t understand, why is it that the only application that business people seem to use is Excel Spreadsheet. I have seen people open Excel to simply take notes. Is there an MBA course called Spreadsheets 101? I think this is the biggest example of the hammer/nail principle.
What always worries me the most, though, is when businessy/management types try to manage projects using spreadsheets; everything needs to be recorded, tallied, and accounted for. Somewhere along the line the people get lost in all the numbers and cells.
I can’t quite put my finger on why exactly I dislike Excel, but I do. Maybe it is the formula/math part of it or maybe it is the fact that people try to use it for everything. Maybe it is just that I have had to create far too many programs where the specs where put into giant, multi-page spreadsheets which require a committee and several days or weeks to change. I think I’m just tired of trying to understand mapping instructions from spreadsheets that require 3 monitors to display the whole thing.
Chris,
I think you will find that it is the failure of IT to provide a tool that allows the business users to play around with figures that makes them use it. Put yourself in a position of a trader who has made a number of buys and sells today. It would be ideal if someone told him what his P&L is, what his exposure is and what the trend has been. Unfortunately for the trader, the IT are doing their own stuff building large platforms to cater to all the world’s problems. In the meanwhile, the business has to go on as usual and the spreadsheet seems to be the best compromise.
regards,
Prashant
Batting on behalf of spreadsheet lovers of the world
What a successful business tool – the spreadsheet! It actually has most features needed by the business people, who has completely different view of technology from that of the technical people. Spreadsheet is easy to learn and use – for the basic part; it also can do a lot of complex data analysis other than just recording the data. The speed to process the data is fast, compared to any popular web application. There is no need to learn how to write a program to draw a diagram like the Matlab, however, the savvy users will write some macros. People now talked about the Excel is an excellent example of DSL for the business domain. Of course, it is not a tool for specific purpose.
I actually agree with both posts. I think Excel is probably the most successful application ever created. I just don’t think it should be used to record the minutes from a meeting or be the sole tool used in recording the metrics from a particular project.
My argument is not with the tool or the proper use of the tool, it is with all the useless things I see people using it for. It just seems to be ingrained in business people that there computer equals Excel so everything gets done in Excel.
I am really getting into Google Spreadsheets-: Multi-user adds a whole new dimension to it, you can see other users updating data in other cells. Fun.
I think your post is rather pointless to put it bluntly. I mean if you have a problem with users using excel for “useless things” then you really don’t understand good software. In any case if a user decides to use excel rather than word or notepad to take down meeting minutes you have to ask yourself why? I don’t think using a software for other purposes than its intended use is really useless. In fact some people base this on good software. Software thats used for other purposes than its original intended purpose… isn’t that why we try to develop flexible useful software?