Related papers: Documenting Spreadsheets

Testing is a vital part of software development, and spreadsheets are like any other software in this respect. This paper discusses the testing of spreadsheets in the light of one practitioner's experience. It considers the concept of…

Spreadsheets are used to develop application software that is distributed to users. Unfortunately, the users often have the ability to change the programming statements ("source code") of the spreadsheet application. This causes a host of…

Spreadsheets are software programs which are typically created by end-users and often used for business-critical tasks. Many studies indicate that errors in spreadsheets are very common. Thus, a number of vendors offer auditing tools which…

Spreadsheets offer a supremely successful and intuitive means of processing and exchanging numerical content. Its intuitive ad-hoc nature makes it hugely popular for use in diverse areas including business and engineering, yet these very…

This paper presents the arguments and supporting business metrics for Enterprise Spreadsheet Management to be seen as a necessary good. These arguments are divided into a summary of external business drivers that make it necessary and the…

We propose a research strategy for creating and deploying prescriptive recommendations for spreadsheet practice. Empirical data on usage can be used to create a taxonomy of spreadsheet classes. Within each class, existing practices and…

It is widely documented that the absence of a structured approach to spreadsheet engineering is a key factor in the high level of spreadsheet errors. In this paper we propose and investigate the application of Test-Driven Development to the…

We present a spreadsheet implementation, extended with sheet-defined functions, that allows users to define functions using only standard spreadsheet concepts such as cells, formulas and references, requiring no new syntax. This implements…

Spreadsheets are widely used by knowledge workers, especially in the industrial sector. Their methodology enables a well understood, easy and fast possibility to enter data. As filling out a spreadsheet is more accessible to common…

A demonstration in MS Excel to show how users can connect their spreadsheet models to the external environment that the model represents. We employ indexes to generate a list of relevant evidence that is hyperlinked to the context in which…

The frequency with which spreadsheets are used and the associated risk is well known. Many tools and techniques have been developed which help reduce risks associate with creating and maintaining spreadsheet. However, little consideration…

Past studies show that only a small percent of organizations implement and enforce formal rules or informal guidelines for the designing, testing, documenting, using, modifying, sharing and archiving of spreadsheet models. Due to lack of…

We developed an internet-based questionnaire on spreadsheet use that we administered to a large number of users in several companies and organizations to document how spreadsheets are currently being developed and used in business. In this…

Most spreadsheet surveys both for reporting use and error focus on the practical application of the spreadsheet in a particular industry. Typically these studies will illustrate that a particular percentage of spreadsheets are used for…

There have been many articles and mishaps published about the risks of uncontrolled spreadsheets in today's business environment, including non-compliance, operational risk, errors, and fraud all leading to significant loss events.…

Spreadsheets are end-user programs and domain models that are heavily employed in administration, financial forecasting, education, and science because of their intuitive, flexible, and direct approach to computation. As a result,…

Spreadsheets provide many of the key links between information systems, closing the gap between business needs and the capability of central systems. Recent regulations have brought these vulnerable parts of information supply chains into…

Previous research on spreadsheet risks has predominantly focussed on errors inadvertently introduced by spreadsheet writers i.e. it focussed on the end-user aspects of spreadsheet development. When analyzing a faulty spreadsheet, one might…

Developing an error-free spreadsheet has been a problem since the beginning of end-user computing. In this paper, we present a methodology that separates the modeling from the implementation. Using proven techniques from Information Systems…

Spreadsheets are powerful tools which play a business-critical role in many organizations. However, many bad decisions taken due to faulty spreadsheets show that these tools need serious quality assurance. Furthermore, while collaboration…