Spreadsheets are software systems often encountered in fields of application where end-users demand a high degree of flexibility. Unlike traditional software, spreadsheets often have shortcomings in quality attributes such as correctness or maintainability. As a consequence, faults in spreadsheets are very common and sometimes cause high impact. The European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group has collected a list of horror stories - they document dozens of cases where organizations have lost millions or even billions of dollars due to faulty spreadsheets.

Some people believe that the whole trouble originates from the fact that spreadsheets are an "inferior" technology and should be replaced by "professional software". We have studied several projects which followed this path but failed miserably because no other technology is as well-accepted as spreadsheets and offers end-users the level of flexibility they require.

The first and foremost problem behind faulty spreadsheets is that typical end-users have too much trust in their spreadsheets: They believe that "the computer makes no mistakes" and simply do not think of inspecting their spreadsheets before using them. Therefore, educating users and fighting overconfidence are the first, important steps in the course of resolving the issues.

There are many ideas on how to increase spreadsheet quality on the process level ('in the large') by organizational measures such as reviews or end-user training. They try to provide answers to high-level questions like:

• How much time should be spent for inspecting a spreadsheet of a certain size / complexity?
• How often should spreadsheets be inspected? Do you need a live monitoring?
• Which level of expertise is necessary for a spreadsheet inspection?

The even more tricky part relates to the underlying technical and methodological levels:

• What do spreadsheet faults actually look like?
• Are there patterns which can be used to identify them?
• Are there better scanning techniques than "human eye-balling"?
• Which items are must-haves for a spreadsheet inspection checklist?
• Which level of tool support is appropiate?

Our tool unifies a number of established (and some bleeding-edge) spreadsheet inspection techniques under a common umbrella and tightly integrates them in Microsoft Excel. It remains your choice which of these techniques you want to use and how you want to embed them in your business processes.

Learn more about its features