“ Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Abelson/Sussman If we do a planned design before programming, then we can discover many of the issues that we should avoid and the application will be much more structured and easier to enhance in future. Over time, we are going to add more bugs than new features without a proper design. We might find that it is getting more and more difficult and time consuming to develop the application. However, most EUC developers are part-time programmers and do not have proper programming training.

If we are a seasoned system consultant, then we may consider evolutionary design, e.g., design the system as we develop the system. Once we confirm the requirements, we can start the design. It is always a good idea to prepare a peer-reviewed requirements document. The project schedule may double or triple, and we still don't see the end of development. This eventually results in a development cycle that takes entirely too long. The truth is, most EUC developers only remember a portion of the requirements. This is probably the most common mistake end-user computing (EUC) developers believe they know what the requirements are and start coding right away. “ Without requirements or design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file. ” - Louis Srygley What if the application owner leaves the company?Īre we sure that there is no commercial software available? Most Excel applications are developed, maintained, and operated by a single person. They may not have the infrastructure in place to do a proper software development life cycle. The development cycle could take months or even years. But most business users do not have the necessary skills or training to develop a high performing, well designed, robust application. We can use VBA to import data from a PDF report, develop an optimization model, predictive model, or a Monte Carlo simulation, etc. This article is focused on Excel application design and how to build a better Excel application.īefore developing any application, we should always conduct due diligence to make sure it is cost effective to build an application and whether this is the best solution. I have migrated many Excel applications to enterprise systems and have seen many common problems. However, many Excel applications do not have proper design and therefore suffer from poor performance, are difficult to enhance, and are error prone. As actuaries, we have used Excel to develop applications that handle data analysis, reports, models and many other business activities.

Excel is probably the most popular business software application.

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