Spreadsheet Models for Managers
Getting Access to Spreadsheet Models for Managers
If 
you use Excel to model businesses, business processes, or
business transactions, this course will change your life. You’ll learn how to create tools for yourself that will amaze
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Spreadsheet Models for Managers
Session 7
Managing Spreadsheet Modeling Projects
Summary of Pages
As a manager, you’re responsible for the processes people use for developing spreadsheet projects. One practice stands out as a way of making your team, group or department more effective — structured technical reviews. In this session, we’ll study the practice of technical reviews, and learn why they are so helpful to the organization, as it tries to become more sophisticated about business modeling.
Structured reviews and inspections help you find out as early as possible about any defects of design or implementation that might be present in your project. But they do more. They provide a way for your more capable people to show the rest of the organization how they do what they do. By example, and by offering constructive feedback to others, they gradually propagate their knowledge through the organization in the context of the structured technical review.
In this session, we’ll demonstrate tools that you can use to do your own reviews and inspections of spreadsheets.
Below is a summary of pages for Session 7.
- Review of Last Time
- Managing spreadsheet modeling projects
- Management as the art of steering a system
- Better management makes better models
- Process patterns example: driving
- Six cultural patterns of organizational model-making
- Some key process areas for spreadsheet modeling
- Checklist items: workbooks
- Checklist items: worksheets (1)
- Checklist items: worksheets (2)
- Checklist items: worksheets (3)
- Checklist items: worksheets (4)
- Reviews and inspections
- Output of review/inspection
- Roles
- Preparing for an inspection
- The main points
- Reference readings
- Preview of Next Time
- More general reference readings
- Appendix: other management practices
- Requirements management
- Project planning
- Project tracking and oversight
- Steering a modeling project
- Subcontract management
- Quality assurance
- Configuration management
- Organization process focus
- Organization process definition
- Training program
- Intergroup coordination
Links to other materials for Session 7.
Last Modified: Wednesday, 27-Apr-2016 04:15:26 EDT
Many believe that the main benefit of spreadsheet inspections is that they locate issues so they can be fixed. Certainly they do accomplish that. But spreadsheet inspections, when performed early enough and often enough, can actually prevent problems. And preventing problems is certainly more valuable than locating them.
We hope that you’ll apply what you learn about spreadsheet inspections when you work on your projects. If you’re working in a team, review your project schedule and decide when would be advantageous times to insert an inspection or two. If you’re working alone, ask someone else who’s working alone if they would be willing to inspect your project in exchange for your inspecting theirs.
Since we don’t grade on a curve, helping someone else doesn’t hurt you. Inspection exchanges raise the quality of both projects — and both grades. Whatever you do, don’t wait until the end to do your inspections.