Related papers: In Pursuit of Spreadsheet Excellence
Recognizing that the use of spreadsheets within finance will likely not subside in the near future, this paper discusses a major barrier that is preventing more organizations from adopting enterprise spreadsheet management programs. But…
Previous spreadsheet inspection experiments have had human subjects look for seeded errors in spreadsheets. In this study, subjects attempted to find errors in human-developed spreadsheets to avoid the potential artifacts created by error…
There is an overlooked iceberg of problems in end user computing. Spreadsheets are developed by people who are very skilled in their main job function, be it finance, procurement, or production planning, but often have had no formal…
Existing approaches for detecting anomalies in spreadsheets can help to discover faults, but they are often applied too late in the spreadsheet lifecycle. By contrast, our approach detects anomalies immediately whenever users change their…
Spreadsheet collaboration provides valuable opportunities for learning and expertise sharing between colleagues. Sharing expertise is essential for the retention of important technical skillsets within organisations, but previous studies…
We consider the challenge of creating guidelines to evaluate the quality of a spreadsheet model. We suggest four principles. First, state the domain-the spreadsheets to which the guidelines apply. Second, distinguish between the process by…
The humble spreadsheet is the most widely used data storage, manipulation and modelling tool. Its ubiquity over the past 30 years has seen its successful application in every area of life. Surprisingly the spreadsheet has remained…
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…
Various techniques for developing spreadsheet models greatly improve the chance that the end result will not contain basic mechanical errors. However, for every discipline in which a given technique is useful, there is likely to be another…
A review of 75 formal audit assignments shows that the effort taken to identify defects in financial models taken from the domain of limited recourse (project) finance is uncorrelated with common measures of the physical characteristics of…
The hard coding of input data or constants into spreadsheet formulas is widely recognised as poor spreadsheet model design. However, the importance of avoiding such practice appears to be underestimated perhaps in light of the lack of…
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…
Business rules represent the knowledge that guides the operations of a business organization. They are implemented in software applications used by organizations, and the activity of extracting them from software is known as business rule…
The traditional approach to spreadsheet auditing generally consists of auditing every distinct formula within a spreadsheet. Although tools are developed to support auditors during this process, the approach is still very time consuming and…
In the spreadsheet error community, both academics and practitioners generally have ignored the rich findings produced by a century of human error research. These findings can suggest ways to reduce errors; we can then test these…
The paper presents two complementary strategies for identifying errors in spreadsheet programs. The strategies presented are grounded on the assumption that spreadsheets are software, albeit of a different nature than conventional…
Research on formulae production in spreadsheets has established the practice as high risk yet unrecognised as such by industry. There are numerous software applications that are designed to audit formulae and find errors. However these are…
Past research shows that spreadsheet models are prone to such a high frequency of errors and data security implications that the risk management of spreadsheet development and spreadsheet use is of great importance to both industry and…
Spreadsheets in financial markets are frequently used as database, calculator and reporting application combined. This paper describes an alternative approach in which spreadsheet design and database technology have been brought together in…
This paper discusses spreadsheets documentation and new means to achieve this end by using Excel's built-in "Comment" function. By structuring comments, they can be used as an essential tool to fully explain spreadsheet. This will greatly…