Spreadsheets The dark matter of IT Felienne Hermans
- Slides: 42
Spreadsheets: The dark matter of IT Felienne Hermans (@felienne)
95% of all U. S. firms use spreadsheets for financial reporting
50% of spreadsheets form the basis for decisions
Spreadsheet exist ‘under the radar’
Spreadsheets can have a long life, 5 years on average
Average sheet is used by 12 different people
Only 33% of spreadsheets has a manual
Complex spreadsheets lead to disaster
The European Spreadsheet Risk Interest Group (Eusprig. org) collects horror stories
Loss Cause 2. 4 million dollars typo
Loss Cause 2. 4 million dollars typo llars o d n o li il m 4 2 rror copy-paste e
What can we do?
No docs, errors, long life It looks like…
No docs, errors, long life It looks like software!
In software, tools have been created to help programmers understand code
We bring understandability tools to spreadsheets
Then we tried the tool in practice
Users started diagnosing with the diagrams
“This is too complex”
“This arrow is too fat”
Move C 11: F 20 to POA Project
We tried the tool in practice again
Complicated formulas still got in the way of understanding details
This formula can be simplified
The analyses are combined in our tool Perfect. XL
The analyses are combined in our tool Perfect. XL (www. infotron. nl/strata)
We build tools to visualize and improve spreadsheets
What can we learn from the success of spreadsheets?
Most alternatives still look like this
BI Complex Spreadsheets Simple
BI Complex Plan Spreadsheets Simple Serendipity
Spreadsheets: The dark matter of IT Felienne Hermans (@felienne)