THE spreadsheet book (Spreadsheet Hell)

My new book is about to be published(And you all thought I’ve been tossing it off all this time )

Click the pic for more info.

This entry was posted on Thursday, 7th February, 2008 at 3:38 am and is filed under development, error, Excel, quality, risk, security, skill, Spreadsheet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 Responses to “THE spreadsheet book (Spreadsheet Hell)”

Simon Says:
Thursday, 7th February, 2008 at 3:39 am | Reply
Its a joke obviously
(I HAVE been tossing it off all this time!)
Marcus Says:
Thursday, 7th February, 2008 at 9:00 am | Reply
Excellent! Where do I get a autographed copy?
Biggus Dickus Says:
Thursday, 7th February, 2008 at 4:28 pm | Reply
Simon:

Can I use this in my presentation (with credit to you of course) ? Love it !!

Dick
Simon Says:
Thursday, 7th February, 2008 at 4:47 pm | Reply
Dick
Of course you can, or go to that link and make up your own even more topical one.
‘Job for life implementing Sharepoint’??;-)
Richard Schollar Says:
Friday, 8th February, 2008 at 9:23 am | Reply
Simon

I already know several people at work who live by the principles I suspect are advocated in your book ;-)

Richard
Rob Bruce Says:
Friday, 8th February, 2008 at 10:05 am | Reply
The ‘key man’ thing is worth discussing. I’ve ended up being a ‘key man’ (can I say ‘key person’, please?) a couple of times and in both cases it was not because I’d built a system in secret and then kept the knowledge to myself, but because management wouldn’t/couldn’t hear my argument that spreadsheet projects need to be planned, managed and documented like any other business systems project. I was given impossible deadlines to pull stuff together and absolutely no chance to properly design or document anything.

Fortunately for me, being a key person does have its up side. To stop my regular threats to leave they simply stuffed my mouth full of money – a £25,000 rise in annual salary in just a few years. But in the end, job satisfaction is about much more than the size of the monthly wage slip and I left anyway (and took a pay cut to work in a more interesting environment).

The thing is (and managers really need to be aware of this) in neither case did the business collapse after I left. They muddled through just as businesses always do. After all, the hallmark of British business is rubbish management, and the quality or otherwise of the information systems used by rubbish management really can’t do much to make management less rubbish.
Biggus Dickus Says:
Friday, 8th February, 2008 at 1:05 pm | Reply
“The ‘key man’ thing is worth discussing. I’ve ended up being a ‘key man’ (can I say ‘key person’, please?) a couple of times and in both cases it was not because I’d built a system in secret and then kept the knowledge to myself, but because management wouldn’t/couldn’t hear my argument that spreadsheet projects need to be planned, managed and documented like any other business systems project. I was given impossible deadlines to pull stuff together and absolutely no chance to properly design or document anything.”

YES,YES, YES !!! I am in fact right in the middle of one of those right now!! Where I have TRIED to coax the client to have ONE truth stored in a Data warehouse and despite all my efforts they show up with more than one spreadsheet with conflicting numbers, which now I have to scramble to fix URGENTLY so they can publish their monthend figures …..

And the more successful you are at proliferating your work (or the longer you are in business) the more of these situations get piled on each other. It’s a SERIOUS risk to them and to my sanity (which is threatened to begin with ;-) ).

Dick
Simon Says:
Friday, 8th February, 2008 at 4:28 pm | Reply
Yes you can say person, but ‘man’ in this context already means person (from the latin manus meaning hand).

I often wonder if the incredible self healing shown when key people leave might suggest much of our work is a little bit futile and/or pointless?

Its clearly not necessary, by definition, if the co can continue without it.

I think the key man thing is universal across all disciplines, and all cos. Its part of the side effect of the middle management massacre that was popular in the 70’s. The fat that was cut, was in fact the coordination layer.

I have been, and continue to be in that position for several clients. Which rational minded manager wouldn’t swap the definite cost of documentation for the cost saving of relying on one person, and it attendant (usually) hidden risk?