How a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet From Hell Slowed Williams' F1 Cars For Years
How a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet From Hell Slowed Williams' F1 Cars For Years
One of history's greatest Formula 1 teams, Williams, has apparently been hamstrung by a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for years.
Pretty sure someone or even several people had that problem pointed out for years - and the management didn't care for those "negativlings" and ignored the problem.
The rot starts at the top.
The team was just heavily under funded when it was still managed by the Williams family. There was no money to change anything. Former drivers that have visited the factory have all told that it felt like they had traveled back in time, everything is outdated at the Williams factory. They were stuck in a downward spiral. They couldn’t build a fast car to get into the points because of the outdated factory, which meant they didn’t get a lot of prize money and also couldn’t attract enough sponsorship money. Thus they didn’t have the money to improve the car for the next season. When the team was sold to an investor group they finally got enough funds to turn this sinking ship around.
Pretty much all data heavy organisations use excel VERY heavily. And when nobody understands the model within them any more, they need retiring and are usually replaced with... Excel! This time with even more tabs and columns. To replace these things with computer models risks repeating the same problem the original sheet has: bus factors and complexities are hard, more so even in python/r than excel sadly. Maybe one day something will trump it, but that day is not today
SQL would like a little chat with you.
I do this for a living. I've spent basically my whole career (15 years full time professional at this stage) basically trying to kill excel. You can't, or at least I can't. You can add processes to it, you can programmatically read/write from it, but when it comes down to ditching it: every stakeholder is invested in excel. No other piece of office has the staying power that excel has, it will outlast us all
You could use a database, and SQL. Or is that crazy talk?
Yes. Your boss needs to be able to double click on an email attachment otherwise it's like you never even did anything.
This doesn't sound like an Excel problem it sounds like a management/software upkeep/bus factor problem.
I'm going to be the odd man out and say that Excel isn't even that bad: I use it a lot for RPG simulations and engineering simulations, and not just because CSV is normalized. It can be part of the tech stack, but not in a mission critical way. There's really no tool like it especially if you are doing simulations.
100%, excel is great for spreadsheets and garbage as a database, yet so many people keep using it as a database. I'm currently pushing for my department to transition their many "excel databases" to proper databases and I'm getting mass surprised Pikachu face because no one else knows they're not the same.
If you're working with csv data, https://www.visidata.org/ >>>>> excel (assuming you're comfortable with terminal UIs, anyway). You can very rapidly slice and dice data and for formulas and such, you can just write Python.
Pretty sure every professional CAD software has interfaces for external parts, which can then trigger an analysis in accounting for parts not on storage.
I use Minecraft developed in-game built computers for all my parts inventory needs
clear example of why people should only work on their "single" proficiency. Excel? really?
excel 4 lyfe