The Excel Development team I have started blogging here.
I’m not a great fan of Excel, it overstepped its bounds of being a spreadsheet program many moons ago and now it’s an uncontrollable monster.
Of course users love it and best analogy for the reason they do is that Excel could be compared to a top of the range Swiss-army knife, with so many blades and bits and bobs you couldn’t possible get around to using them all. It’s great! So you have this great tool you can take on the world! But all these great features blind you to the limitations; you wouldn’t use a Swiss army knife to service your car? So metaphorically speaking why do people try? You need a specialist tool for big jobs, like a database for example, for holding large amounts of data safely and easily.
My organisation isn’t any different from any other; we have these spreadsheets all over the shop spiralling out of control daily. Does anyone stop to think about risk? No we leave that to Architects! No wonder I start to spit when someone mentions Excel.
Anyway Excel Development team, what ideas have you got to help me get the monster you’ve created under control then?