Stores Inc 24 (a)

2. Spreadsheet Errors: What we think we can do

What we know?

1. What are the leading causes of Spreadsheet errors?

The leading causes of spreadsheet errors are

a) Human incapability of doing complex cognitive tasks with accuracy, this is a limitation in human capability and this contributes partly to the errors that are caused in spreadsheets

b) Lack of disciplined development practices is one of the most common reasons why spreadsheet contains errors. Many organization has policies in general about end user development in general, much less spreadsheet development

c) Many developers build the models and hardwire it to one end result they are working without considering the constraints or different possible scenarios. This ultimately leads to the fact that the model doesn’t work for any other input variables other than the one that is being used to.

d) Another common reason of spreadsheet errors is due to the overconfidence of the developers in the accuracy of the spreadsheets. They don’t spend time to test the spreadsheet for any possible errors

e) We could also say innocence (in a sense of not knowing the excel capabilities) as one of the common reasons why spreadsheets has errors, people tend to learn from friends and coworkers without any proper training on Excel and its capabilities which ultimately lead in unstructured spreadsheet development

2. Why these errors are typically not detected?

a) Primary reason for missing out these errors is that there is no adoption of the standard development cycle phases, many developers directly jump in and do the development without putting any thoughts and scenarios and once the development is done there is very little or no effort put in to test what is developed with different decision parameters.

b) Secondly since there is no standard approach used in the overall spreadsheet development, the possibility of standard audit mechanisms to...