The Excel Trap

If your only tool is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
– Abraham H. Maslow

The pressure on the team is growing every day. The introduction of the process area Requirements Management was defined as one of the core measures during process optimization. The entire CMMI project is firmly planned and must be completed by the end of the quarter.

Previously, the organization was examined, efficiency gaps were found, and improvement measures were defined. Work packages were planned, tasks were budgeted, consultants engaged, and expert working groups formed within the customer organization.

The final version of the process model has now been delivered, reviewed, and released. All requirements of the CMMI Maturity Level 2 have been addressed, particularly traceability. In the Requirements Management area, CMMI demands a well-defined and maintained traceability between various work results.

The procedure is simple: when the requirements manager receives a new feature, it is entered into a prepared Excel sheet and passed on to planners, analysts, and architects. They, in turn, report updated plan data and component IDs back to the requirements manager, who registers them in the appropriate columns and updates all relevant statuses. The Excel file is stored on a shared drive, accessible to everyone. Only a few users, such as the requirements manager, have write access.

“Tools are unimportant; only the process counts.”

A beautiful concept — at least on paper. Since an ordinary Excel sheet was used, expensive tools and their setup efforts were avoided. “It’s not important what tools you use; it’s only the process that counts,” says the chief consultant confidently.

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The pilot project gets underway in full steam. The first phase of requirement analysis takes off. Two hundred and thirty new requirements flow into the Excel sheet, systematically analyzed, estimated, and planned. The requirements manager processes incoming data daily — comments, status changes, plan updates, and component IDs.

The dashboard charts look magnificent. Everything appears professional.

Soon, the workload reaches its natural limit. Some requirements are forgotten, others discovered as duplicates and split. It turns out that their impact analyses were based on differing assumptions, producing inconsistent results. The “fix” is quick: assign predefined ID ranges to keep them linked.

“Why don’t they just let us do our work? Things were so easy before…”

Reality strikes. The Excel sheet now contains 350 entries and 35 columns — 12,250 individual fields. To err is human, but the process allows no room for error.

Self-checking no longer suffices. More and more resources are assigned to maintain data quality: weekly reviews, macros, scripts, and formulas appear everywhere. Despite all efforts, inconsistencies grow.

The requirements manager is now a one-person army — QA, script developer, and Excel expert — and starts working overtime. It seems that the requirements manager has failed, or that the resource planning was wrong. Management decides to hire a second person.

Now, two people are editing the same Excel sheet simultaneously. Predictably, conflicts, overwriting, and confusion multiply. Excel is not built for multi-user collaboration. Reviews and corrections grow exponentially. The team grows frustrated:

“We’re drowning in bureaucracy. It was all so simple before…”

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The story — taken straight from real IT project life — follows its predictable path. Planners, architects, testers, and customers grow increasingly tired of the chaos. Frustration peaks, and the CMMI project is put on hold. The consultants are sent home.

Without a functioning requirements management process, the targeted maturity level remains unreachable. The optimization project fails.

Tools cost money. Missing tools cost a fortune.

Excel is fine for provisional solutions or one-off tasks. It is a terrible choice for professional requirements management. The constant cost pressure and the belief that Excel can replace real tools are common reasons why process improvement projects fail.

Requirements management needs more than a spreadsheet. It requires configurable workflows, access control, multi-user capability, baselining, consistency checking, and usability.

Nobody would use a drawing program instead of a CASE tool for software design, even if it’s cheaper and looks nice. Yet, in many process areas, that’s exactly what happens. Spreadsheets are used to manage projects, risks, defects, and test cases — until chaos inevitably follows.

Organizations that maintain their entire process models in text processors or spreadsheets create “write-only documentation.” It looks professional but is practically useless. The money saved on tools is eventually lost on manual data maintenance and failed process acceptance.

Tools must be introduced, deployed, and integrated.

Different tasks require different tools — project planning, requirements management, architecture, design, quality assurance, and more. Large projects use dozens of specialized tools, and they must communicate reliably.

Without proper integration, data exchange becomes error-prone and expensive. Tool integration is complex — systems differ in data structures and interfaces, and each process area has unique needs.

Without reasonably functioning integrated tooling, no organization can truly function. Introducing tools costs money and time — it is always a project in itself. ROI is hard to calculate, but ignoring tooling dramatically increases the risk of total failure.

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