Authors
Thomas A. Grossman, Vijay Mehrotra, & Ozgur Ozluk
Abstract
In the business world, spreadsheets are ubiquitous and are widely recognized as essential tools. In the academic world, spreadsheets have received scant research attention, and there is evidence they are perceived as mere personal productivity tools, distinct from more important "information systems". This is unfortunate, because the business world would benefit greatly from research that improved spreadsheet practices.
We seek to bring spreadsheets to the attention of information systems researchers as an area with rich opportunities for research that is relevant to business. We present empirical observations that show how spreadsheets and spreadsheet information systems are essential to business, highlighting their large diversity, and their deep integration with business processes and work systems.
We provide examples of a wide variety of users (ranging from top executives to front-line workers) using spreadsheets or spreadsheet results to make risky decisions, capture and store crucial data, performed advanced analysis, communicate critical information to internal and external stakeholders, and other vital activities.
We show that spreadsheets are essential to business; spreadsheets function as information systems; spreadsheets are an effective application software development platform; spreadsheets "inherited" from other people are important; and spreadsheets play a central role in the evolution of work systems. We document misalignment between the high importance of a spreadsheet and the low level of resources devoted to creating and verifying it.
Our findings suggest that spreadsheets merit significant research attention. We propose research questions on empirical and prescriptive aspects of spreadsheet creation, maintenance, use, and culture.
Sample
We propose research questions on empirical and prescriptive aspects of spreadsheet creation, maintenance, use, and culture:
- How prevalent are essential spreadsheets?
- Why do people choose spreadsheets rather than other languages to develop information systems, and under what circumstances would people be well-advised to choose spreadsheets?
- Can we develop a taxonomy of spreadsheet information systems that can be used to carve up the spreadsheet universe into taxa containing sufficient commonality to admit strong, detailed prescriptive guidance?
- How do different types of spreadsheet developers aquire skills?
- Are spreadsheets the second best way to do many kinds of analysis and therefore are they the best way to do most modeling?
- How common is the use of spreadsheets for application software?
- Under what circumstances are spreadsheets appropriate for application development?
- Are spreadsheets used as a powerful rapid prototyping language, with the prototypes in some cases being suitable for deployment to end users?
- How can a transition from spreadsheet to third-generation language be anticipated and managed?
- Have any applications been ported from third-generation languages to spreadsheets?
- What can we learn about the quality control, risk, documentation, and management of inherited spreadsheets?
- How can software engineering be applied to spreadsheets?
- What is the appropriate level of resources to devote to the development and quality control of an essential spreadsheets?
- Are managers making wise risk tradeoffs by choosing not to invest in careful spreadsheet development, or are these managers making mistakes, due perhaps to ignorance, or a false belief that their developers will request appropriate resources?
- What are best practices for managing spreadsheets that are developed organically within a work system to address an unmet need?
- How can organizations create conditions to foster successful coevolution of spreadsheets and business processes?
- How can this co-evolution be connected to managerial decisions regarding development resources and risk of errors?
Publication
2005, Working paper
