Forum Discussion
Spreadsheet risk
Dear community. How do you manage spreadsheet risk? risk of input and logic error. Thank you!!
3 Replies
That is a very important issue.
You should take a look at this site.
Especially Best Practice and Horror Stories.
Those are really good resources, especially the Best Practices sub-links. So good that Microsoft should get permission to include a few of them somewhere on this website.
They're worth reading definitely for spreadsheet novices, but even an occasional review for the more experienced among us. Even the best tennis pros can benefit from coaches...from reminders, fine tuning....
I can think of all kinds of answers. It's an interesting question, first. But of course, there are all kinds of considerations as to what's the context. Are we talking financial analyses on which million dollar investments will be made? Or is it just a family budget?
So with that by way of backkground.
- Accept the risk. Do your best to design a spreadsheet so that it's accurate for the purpose, and pay close attention during the first period of usage. But accept the risk; question things that look off. I'd apply that to my family budget spreadsheet.
- Use data validation everywhere possible on the input end. think about the kinds of mistakes that can be made and do your best to prevent them. Have logic beyond data validation on individual cells that sort of duplicates the second "Are You Sure You Want To....?" kinds of questions that can be so annoying...yet helpful.
- Test. Test. Test. Ask other people to try to break it, to give it absurd input (absurd in the context of whatever context it is. The more that is riding on it, the more you test it.
Etc. It really is a good question. There's no one answer.
