Are you an Excel guru?

[EternalOptimist]

My problem is that I'm not good at pure theory with Excel so I can't learn stuff without a problem to solve.

can you not 'invent' a problem that needs solving

I once built a multi-player animated game in msaccess that I called 'Tora Bora'

where one side had to catch osama, the other had to hide in the caves.

[BoredBloke]

Been a bane of my career. I have found, many little offices, have a go to person, and the person who knows a bit about developing and he’s been building little spreadsheets for years that make his life easier. Then the department becomes reliant on these little spreadsheets, and the tech guys adds a little bit more functionality here and there, then the organisation starts relying on it to automate some of its processes. Then work out, some of these orgs I work for, have 100 branches, each with their little go to person doing their own little thing.

You have 100’s, sometimes thousands, of stupid little spreadsheets, or worse, access databases, holding their own versions of central data. Then, you have the political nightmare, of getting the departments to agree to give these little tools up, so you can centralise the applications using a properly designed, specc’d and built application. Also, then you have to agree a common data model...

Earlier in my career, I would have to understand complex spreadsheets, so I knew what they were getting up to, and some of the code....

I still actually come across this sometimes, current client has many departments who operate on their own, different, versions of centralised data; nightmare.

It happens in all big companies. From time to time they have a push to mop up all these little user developed tools and replace them with one big all singing & dancing system. But what you find is the big system is often delivered some time in the future when the buisiness has moved on and no longer meets the specific needs of the users, and so itself spawns a number of spreadsheets to workaround the gaps. Also, as fast as you mop the Excel Access solutions up, somebody (me) is sat somewhere in the business churning out ever more complicated ones.

[bless 'em all]

A rather large telecoms co that I once worked for had over 40K employees payroll calculations handled on a in-house rather bespoke Access db for years - the thing was so tetchy that the person who 'wrote' it spent all month maintaining and tweeking it for the next pay-run.

Said Co decided to go to a more commercial product and the project kicked off.

I suggested we go for a comparative test - running the same data on both systems with identical parameters for the pay-roll. That was accepted as a decent initial approach, then it all went t**s up.

WHY? I hear you all ask.

The bespoke access guru decided that IF there were any variances in the results then all it would prove is the the commercial product was wrong - he refused to entertain the possibililty that HIS precious database could be wrong and when I pointed that out he withdrew his co-operation and refused to provide the base data needed for the comparative testing.

Any decent PM would have kicked this guys arse around the office and out the door - the PM for this project went on a months holiday and canned the project on his return.

As far as I know there's still 40K people relying on one arrogant t**t and an Access db for their monthly pay.

[eek]

The bespoke access guru decided that IF there were any variances in the results then all it would prove is the the commercial product was wrong - he refused to entertain the possibililty that HIS precious database could be wrong and when I pointed that out he withdrew his co-operation and refused to provide the base data needed for the comparative testing.

Payroll is the one thing you can't mess up. You change peoples hours, offices.... and eventually they accept it and shut up. Screw up pay even slightly and you'll never hear the end of it.

[Mich the Tester]

The bespoke access guru decided that IF there were any variances in the results then all it would prove is the the commercial product was wrong - he refused to entertain the possibililty that HIS precious database could be wrong and when I pointed that out he withdrew his co-operation and refused to provide the base data needed for the comparative testing.

Any decent PM would have kicked this guys arse around the office and out the door - the PM for this project went on a months holiday and canned the project on his return.

As far as I know there's still 40K people relying on one arrogant t**t and an Access db for their monthly pay.

Ah yes, the old 'proven technology' lie. Testers hear it all the time, and I usually ask 'proven? How and by whom?'

Doesn't always help though; some people, especially managers, are just too thick to understand that if you haven't found the faults, it doesn't mean they aren't there and that nobody has suffered damage from them.

[Paddy]

Never a fan of Excel and I don’t like the interface.
Does anyone remember Boeing Calc?
There are some nice plugins for Excel that may help.

Application Models Library

[Mich the Tester]

I've been thinking about writing some articles about the phenomenon of people uncritically believing what it says on their screen above other sources of information. A sort of 'Computer says no' advanced module.

[Old Hack]

It happens in all big companies. From time to time they have a push to mop up all these little user developed tools and replace them with one big all singing & dancing system. But what you find is the big system is often delivered some time in the future when the buisiness has moved on and no longer meets the specific needs of the users, and so itself spawns a number of spreadsheets to workaround the gaps. Also, as fast as you mop the Excel Access solutions up, somebody (me) is sat somewhere in the business churning out ever more complicated ones.

Thanks - I get lots of this work!

[BoredBloke]

Never a fan of Excel and I don’t like the interface.
Does anyone remember Boeing Calc?
There are some nice plugins for Excel that may help.

Application Models Library

What's up with the interface?

[doodab]

What's up with the interface?

Exactly, what could be better than a grid of rectangles each of which contains magic?