Related papers: Requirements for Automated Assessment of Spreadshe…
Maintenance is an important activity in industry. It is performed either to revive a machine/component or to prevent it from breaking down. Different strategies have evolved through time, bringing maintenance to its current state:…
In Part 1, we showed how to develop a conceptual model of a problem involving variables of multiple dimensions, like Products, Regions, Sectors and Months. The conceptual model is presented as a Formula Diagram, giving a global view of the…
In this paper, we discuss the problem of the software engineering of a class of business spreadsheet models. A methodology for structured software development is proposed, which is based on structured analysis of data, represented as…
This paper proposes an interactive repository type for research software metadata which measures and documents software sustainability by accumulating metadata, and computing sustainability metrics over them. Such a repository would help to…
Recent research has highlighted the high incidence of errors in spreadsheet models used in industry. In an attempt to reduce the incidence of such errors, a teaching approach has been devised which aids students to reduce their likelihood…
This paper presents a taxonomy for analytical spreadsheet models. It considers both the use case that a spreadsheet is meant to serve, and the engineering resources devoted to its development. We extend a previous three-type taxonomy, to…
Spreadsheet programs, artifacts developed by non-programmers, are used for a variety of important tasks and decisions. Yet a significant proportion of them have severe quality problems. To address this issue, our previous work presented an…
Several complexity metrics are described which are related to logic structure, data structure and size of spreadsheet models. They primarily concentrate on the dispersion of cell references and cell paths. Most metrics are newly defined,…
This paper presents the findings of a case study of spreadsheet use in a higher education institution in the UK. The paper considers the use of spreadsheets in two units of the organisation, academic registry and finance. Spreadsheet use is…
Spreadsheets have grown up and became very powerful and easy to use tools in applying analytical techniques for solving business problems. Operations managers, production managers, planners and schedulers can work with them in developing…
The long-term sustainability of research software is a critical challenge, as it usually suffers from poor maintainability, lack of adaptability, and eventual obsolescence. This paper proposes a novel approach to addressing this issue by…
The SSMI methodology was developed using concepts from Computer Science, Software Engineering and Information Systems and has been taught to undergraduate and MBA students and in Executive training seminars. In this paper, we describe the…
Fifteen years of research studies have concluded unanimously that spreadsheet errors are both common and non-trivial. Now we must seek ways to reduce spreadsheet errors. Several approaches have been suggested, some of which are promising…
Accounting and Finance (A&F) Professionals are arguably the most loyal and concentrated population of spreadsheet users. The work that they perform in spreadsheets has the most significant impact on financial data and business processes…
We investigate the expressive power of spreadsheets. We consider spreadsheets which contain only formulas, and assume that they are small templates, which can be filled to a larger area of the grid to process input data of variable size.…
Background: As Machine Learning (ML) advances rapidly in many fields, it is being adopted by academics and businesses alike. However, ML has a number of different challenges in terms of maintenance not found in traditional software…
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…
A business case study on how three simple guidelines: 1. Make it easy to check (and maintain) 2. Make it safe to use 3. Keep business logic out of code changed user attitudes and improved spreadsheet quality in a financial services…
Software developers and maintainers need to read and understand source programs and other software artifacts. The increase in size and complexity of software drastically affects several quality attributes, especially understandability and…
Microsoft Excel is the most ubiquitous analytical tool ever built. Companies around the world leverage it for its power, flexibility and ease of use. However, spreadsheets are manually intensive and prone to error, making it difficult for…