Related papers: A Maintainability Checklist for Spreadsheets
The use of uncontrolled financial spreadsheets can expose organizations to unacceptable business and compliance risks, including errors in the financial reporting process, spreadsheet misuse and fraud, or even significant operational…
Spreadsheet technology is a cornerstone of IT systems in most organisations. It is often the glue that binds more structured transaction-based systems together. Financial operations are a case in point where spreadsheets fill the gaps left…
A spreadsheet is remarkably flexible in representing various forms of structured data, but the individual cells have no knowledge of the larger structures of which they may form a part. This can hamper comprehension and increase formula…
Spreadsheets are known to be error-prone. Over the last decade, research has been done to determine the causes of the high rate of errors in spreadsheets. This paper examines the added value of a spreadsheet tool (PerfectXL) that visualizes…
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 spreadsheet has been used by the business community for many years and yet still raises a number of significant concerns. As educators our concern is to try to develop the students skills in both the development of spreadsheets and in…
EuSpRIG concerns direct researchers to revisit spreadsheet education, taking into account error auditing tools, checklists, and good practices. This paper aims at elaborating principles to design a spreadsheet curriculum. It mainly focuses…
We briefly review the well-known risks, weaknesses and limitations of spreadsheets and then introduce some more. We review and slightly extend our previous work on the importance and criticality of spreadsheets in the City of London,…
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…
This paper presents the results of an empirical evaluation of the quality of a structured methodology for the development of spreadsheet models, proposed in numerous previous papers by Rajalingham K, Knight B and Chadwick D et al. This…
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…
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…
While scientists increasingly recognize the importance of metadata in describing their data, spreadsheets remain the preferred tool for supplying this information despite their limitations in ensuring compliance and quality. Various tools…
Errors in spreadsheet applications and models are alarmingly common (some authorities, with justification cite spreadsheets containing errors as the norm rather than the exception). Faced with this body of evidence, the auditor can be faced…
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…
Despite strong evidence of widespread errors, spreadsheet developers rarely subject their spreadsheets to post-development testing to reduce errors. This may be because spreadsheet developers are overconfident in the accuracy of their…
Cloud-based documents are inherently valuable, due to the volume and nature of sensitive personal and business content stored in them. Despite the importance of such documents to Internet users, there are still large gaps in the…
This management paper looks at the real world issues faced by practitioners managing spreadsheets through the production phase of their life cycle. It draws on the commercial experience of several developers working with large corporations,…
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…
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…