The ICAI IT Committee hosted a well-attended breakfast briefing entitled 'Spreadsheet Hell' on 26th June 2008 in the Hilton Hotel, Dublin, at which two expert speakers, Patrick O'Beirne and David Carpenter explored the great disasters and how they occurred, and what best practice now is in relation to spreadsheets.
Regulatory pressure for compliance and risk management has created a dependence on spreadsheets which is increasingly seen as a weakness that needs to be controlled. However, the sheer scale of their use raises considerable practical challenges in discovery, risk assessment, evaluation, and the control of their development, maintenance, and use.
The seminar in June presented research and experience into the causes of expensive mistakes from uncontrolled spreadsheets and described evolving good practice in both end-user training and management action to reduce risk.
Contents:
- Risk and spreadsheet hell
- The Spreadsheet control problem
- End User Computing (EUC) issues
- Publicly reported problems and what caused them
- Real data from those who actually checked
- Evolving good practice recommendations and skills certification
- Good practice in detecting and preventing errors
- The appropriate level of review and testing
- Software tools, product screenshots
- Summary
All related presentations and documents circulated at the event are now available: