Spreadsheet Models for Managers

Session 7

Managing Spreadsheet Modeling Projects
Summary of Pages

s a manager, you're responsible for the processes people use for developing spreadsheet projects. One practice stands out as a way of making your team, group or department more effective — structured technical reviews. In this session, we'll study the practice of technical reviews, and learn why they are so helpful to the organization, as it tries to become more sophisticated about business modeling.

Structured reviews and inspections help you find out as early as possible about any defects of design or implementation that might be present in your project. But they do more. They provide a way for your more capable people to show the rest of the organization how they do what they do. By example, and by offering constructive feedback to others, they gradually propagate their knowledge through the organization in the context of the structured technical review.

In this session, we'll actually practice a technical review, so you can see how the structure works. And we'll demonstrate tools that you can use to do your own reviews and inspections of spreadsheets.

Below is a summary of pages for Session 7.

1. Review of Last Time
2. Managing Spreadsheet Modeling Projects
3. Management as the Art of Steering a System
4. Better Management Makes Better Models
5. Process Patterns Example: Driving
6. Six Cultural Patterns of Organizational Model-Making
7. Some Key Process Areas for Spreadsheet Modeling
8. Reviews and Inspections
9. Output of Review/Inspection
10. Roles
11. Reference Readings
12. Preview of Next Time
13. More General Reference Readings
14. Appendix: Other Management Practices
15. Requirements Management
16. Project Planning
17. Project Tracking and Oversight
18. Steering a Modeling Project
19. Subcontract Management
20. Quality Assurance
21. Configuration Management
22. Organization Process Focus
23. Organization Process Definition
24. Training Program
25. Intergroup Coordination

Links to other materials for Session 7.