Authors
Bas Jansen & Felienne Hermans
Abstract
Spreadsheets are widely used in industry. Spreadsheets also suffer from typical software engineering issues. Previous research shows that they contain code smells, lack documentation and tests, and have a long live span during which they are transferred multiple times among users. These transfers highlight the importance of spreadsheet comprehension. Therefore, in this paper, we analyze the effect of the organization of formulas on spreadsheet comprehension.
To that end, we conduct a controlled experiment with 107 spreadsheet users, divided into two groups. One group receives a model where the formulas are organized such that all related components are grouped closely together, while the other group receives a model where the components are spread far and wide across the spreadsheet. All subjects perform the same set of comprehension tasks on their spreadsheet.
The results indicate that the way formulas are located relative to each other in a spreadsheet, influences the performance of the subjects in their ability to comprehend and adapt the spreadsheet. Especially for the comprehension tasks, the subjects perform better on the model where the formulas were grouped closely together. For the adaptation tasks, we found that the length of the calculation chain influences the performance of the subjects more than the location of the formulas itself.
Sample
This is an example of a spreadsheet that has been designed with the concept of locality in mind.
The blue arrows visualize the precedents that are used in the formula of the active cell (C123). The precedents are all located on the same worksheet, in the rows above the active cell.
Because the precedents are located close to the formula itself, it is not even necessary to scroll when inspecting the formulas.
Publication
2017, IEEE 25th International Conference on Program Comprehension
Full article
The effect of delocalized plans on spreadsheet comprehension - A controlled experiment
Also see
The effect of delocalized plans on the maintainability of spreadsheets
