The system went live in March. Half the team still keeps the spreadsheet.

When a spreadsheet survives the software that was meant to replace it, the usual reading is poor discipline: the more useful reading is a specification nobody wrote down.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The system went live in March. Half the team still keeps the spreadsheet.

A new system goes live. Training is delivered, logins are issued, the old process is formally retired. Six months later, someone in operations still keeps a workbook open all day, and the numbers in it are the ones people actually ring up to ask about. The instinctive reading is a people problem: resistance, habit, insufficient training. That reading is almost always wrong, and it is expensive because it sends effort in the wrong direction. A shadow spreadsheet is not a protest. It is a working artefact built by someone who…

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