The system went live in March. The spreadsheet is still the real one.

Every implementation leaves a spreadsheet behind. What that file contains is the most honest specification document a business will ever get.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The system went live in March. The spreadsheet is still the real one.

Eighteen months after go-live, the operations manager still opens a workbook first thing each morning. It has a tab per customer, colour coding nobody has documented, and a column called “actual” that quietly disagrees with the system. When you ask about it, the answer is some version of: it’s just easier. The instinct is to treat this as an adoption failure, more training, a firmer line from management, a reminder that the business paid six figures for the platform. That framing almost always misdiagnoses what is happening. A shadow spreadsheet…

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