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Progress ?

Last weekend I ran into a good example of my future – and it was sobering.

 

On Sunday I realized that I needed to make a change to a Stored Procedure in a SQL Server/Excel application that had just been moved to the “Production Server” at a client.  This change was critical to the roll-out of my application, one that had been delayed and delayed and delayed because of the complexity of getting through the protocols to stage the application on the “Production Server”. 

 

I am “the only” developer for this project and yet I needed to make a request for the change (that consisted of two lines in the SP) from someone in another time zone who was not going to be in until Tuesday because of holidays up here.  Then once he came in, the change failed (oops) which took a series of back and forth emails followed by a new SP being added that required approval by the manager of the server.  Finally Tuesday afternoon my 2 minute change was in place.

 

Yesterday I decided to “Rem” out a couple of orphaned SQL Views from this same database to clean up my app (that had to have major changes just to accommodate the structure and conventions of the “Production Server”) to test to see if they were really needed anymore.  I could not do this because it would have to go through an approval process and would take days………. Meanwhile the users wait and wait and wait and don’t understand the delay.

 

I know I am a ***-disturber (that’s why I’m an Office developer I guess), but I am very concerned that this kind of process is a major step backwards in the balancing act between giving the business what it needs and producing applications that conform to some type of standards and protocols.  I think it’s a big threat to the future of Office development because once it becomes as difficult and convoluted to implement Office solutions as any other, then Office will lose its advantage and other technologies will break in.  At the same time those who rely on Office technologies to do their business will suffer.

 

The era of just sending out an Excel file in an email is over – is that progress?

 
Published Friday, May 25, 2007 8:54 AM by dmoffat
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Comments

# re: Progress ?

Friday, May 25, 2007 6:09 PM by Simon

Dick, I've just posted a similar 'progress' view.

And there has been a departmental shuffle at one client and my work now needs to be covered by service level agreements and a whole other ton of pointless zero value busy work.

My favorite thing about Excel development is the low ceremony, low overhead, low 'process', and the simple delivery focus. If that goes away I may as well go and work on a PRINCE project and do 2 word docs per line of VBA, and forget about actually delivering something the client could use.

Is it progess? No, is it the future? sadly I think yes.

cheers

Simon

# re: Progress ?

Saturday, May 26, 2007 4:02 AM by XL-Dennis

Dick,

The keywords of today and in the closest future are:

- Server Platforms

- Security

It's indeed a paradigm shift which have a huge impact on Office solutions and the daily life for Office Developers. This progress raise different demands on the Office Developers then in the past.

What I fear most is that it probably means that we are moving away from the business itself. In other words, that's the price we pay in order to keep up the pace with the general progress.

Kind regards,

Dennis

# re: Progress ?

Sunday, May 27, 2007 7:56 AM by dmoffat

Dennis:

"What I fear most is that it probably means that we are moving away from the business itself. In other words, that's the price we pay in order to keep up the pace with the general progress."

Yep - I think you're right.  Believe me, there is a LOT of "general progress" as you say.  The fact is that this "progress" is going to mean that either the cost of delivering solutions is going to go up or we are going to get paid less for an hour spent on our solutions.  Since the latter is not sustainable (it would drive everyone away from the business) then it appears to me that the cost and complexity of solutions is going to go up.  This will put a lot of solutions out of line with budgets, and it will probably mean a propagation of more bad spreadsheets designed and supported by users without the skills and training necessary to make efficient solutions.  

Spreadsheets will continue to slide away in respect and efficiency.  Too bad. Unless MS decides to defend the technology and promote their technology agressively and intelligently.

Dick

# re: Progress ?

Sunday, May 27, 2007 8:05 AM by dmoffat

Simon:

"Is it progess? No, is it the future? sadly I think yes."

Yep - but that it shouldn't be allowed to happen is my argument.  

I am pleased to see organizations out there like your EURSPRIG (or whatever the acronym is ;-)) that goes out and promotes proper spreadsheet use.  I have never heard of any such thing over here.  

I think coporations need to be availed of what they are missing with this technology and what they will miss in the future if they let this get worse.

It's kinda like one of my clients that is outsourcing part of their IT to India.  Great for short-term profits, but where does that leave you when in the end there is no one left at home with the skills?  Someone who can drop into the office and rummage around in your business processes with their hands and look people in the eye to see what's really going on there.  

I have nothing against people in India making a living (don't get me wrong) it's just that there are more issues than short-term profit I'd like to think....

Biggus

# re: Progress ?

Monday, May 28, 2007 5:11 AM by XL-Dennis

Dick,

"Spreadsheets will continue to slide away in respect and efficiency.  Too bad."

Have faith :-)

In my part of the world I see a growing change in the demands for spreadsheeting. Instead of developing spreadsheet solutions more inquires / requests are raised to evaluate and validate internal developed solutions. The recent debate, especially among the BI vendors, have made it more important for more corporates.

Perhaps we in the future will be working more and more with this kind of work?

In my opinion this may be a better path where we can leverage our knowledge and skillness even better and to a better price.

Kind regards,

Dennis

# re: Progress ?

Monday, May 28, 2007 7:27 AM by dmoffat

Dennis:

"Perhaps we in the future will be working more and more with this kind of work? "

I agree we will.  Except for the kind of institutional crap that gets between me and solutions for clients, I enjoy this stuff. As a database developer who uses Excel I appreciate all this functionality.

My concern though is that the traditional Excel flexibility and responsiveness to business needs must be preserved at the same time.  That means a lot of work and a lot of training and a lot of evangelizing on our part and even moreso on MS's part.

# Some Progress...

Tuesday, May 29, 2007 8:00 PM by Marcus

Hi Dick,

I faced a similar situation in a banking environment where a change a SP (or any production environment) incurs a fairly vigorous overhead.

We had an Excel/Access solution which was being migrated to Excel/SQL Server. The overseas development team was going to take 90 business days to migrate 200 QueryDefs to SP’s. In the end we retained the mdb as a middle tier containing only QueryDefs – all the data was in SQL Server. For performance some QueryDefs were written as pass-through queries.

From an ongoing maintenance perspective it was the best thing we did. I had full control over any future query modifications. IT would only need to be engaged if there were structural changes (e.g. adding a new column).

I’d also echo Dennis’ sentiment that we’re “moving away from the business itself”. I’m a big believer that developers should sit near (even next to) the end user so they can ask plenty of ‘dumb’ questions and hopefully even learn to emphasise with the customer’s needs.

Biggus: “outsourcing part of their IT to India”

Interesting – I’ve found the opposite. The larger projects certainly get outsourced, but typical spreadsheet or tactical development requires greater contact and hand-holding with the business. This requires a physical presence or the establishment of a relationship which makes outsourcing harder.

Dennis: “Instead of developing spreadsheet solutions more inquires / requests are raised to evaluate and validate internal developed solutions”

I’d certainly agree here. Of late, I’ve been doing more work ‘reverse engineering’ existing solutions in order that an existing solution can be validated or migrated to a production environment. For example, I was recently involved in migrating an Excel/Access Monte Carlo simulation model to Informatica/SQL Server.

Regards - Marcus

# re: Progress ?

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 10:10 PM by marker27

Sounds like a bad case of ITIL to me.

Been in a few organisations like this and from a management point of view this is what they will get a sexual experience about. But practially I feel there have to be a paperpusher living inside you when it is taken to the extreemes. Not that I dont approve testing and approval procedures. But from what I see those processes tend to get more and more square and not all for the good of a dynamic business.

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