The new system went live in April. The team still runs the spreadsheet.

A shadow spreadsheet surviving six months after go-live is telling you something specific about the system you bought, and it is usually not that people dislike change.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The new system went live in April. The team still runs the spreadsheet.

Six months after go-live, the new system holds the records. But the weekly allocation meeting still opens a spreadsheet. Someone maintains it, on their own laptop, with their own colour coding, and nobody in the room questions it because it is the only thing on screen that answers the question being asked. The usual explanation is resistance to change. That explanation is comfortable, because it locates the problem in people rather than in the £60,000 decision. It is also almost always wrong. A spreadsheet that survives six months of parallel…

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