Re: Spreadsheets ; Can we do better?
- Posted by fizzpopsoft Jun 07, 2015
- 1671 views
Another reason is that in order to write a custom app, the programmer needs to understand the task. Which means someone is going to have to explain the task in sufficient detail. In many cases, there is no one who actually understands the task, they just muddle thru until the numbers come out the way management wants. No one wants to admit this.
And, yes, it's expensive. Got to justify a one-time expense. Just doing the job faster and more accurately isn't justification enough, unless the person doing the job is the CEO and your program will free him up so that he can get in another round of golf. (This is a good sales approach sometimes)
If the person doing the job is not the CEO, it's easier to let some poor salaried employee continue to work unpaid overtime until the reports come out right*.
Note: right is not the same thing as accurate. I once wrote a program which surprised everyone by showing that the company was losing money every time they sold a certain item. After several hours of work with paper and calculator, verifying that the numbers were indeed correct, the project suddenly became 'unnecessary'.
You are 100% right in my experience! In my case though, the "poor salaried employee" was myself, and I am a lazy person by nature... if you can get the computer to figure it out, even if it takes you longer to write the program than doing it manually..
The "reports come out right" issue is sad but true... got the tee shirt ;) Customers would insist the report was wrong, because they didn't like the results (the bill!) so it needed a weeks work to redo manually. No more. The customers have copies of the program so everything is transparent.
Now the program is a "additional feature" that differentiates my company from the competition :)
That said, the amount of data validation and popups to make the program reasonably "user-proof" is large. More than half the source.
