Good Practise

Good Practise

I have been specialising in spreadsheet development for a number of years. I have worked in many organisations but I have never seen any generally accepted standards for documenting small system developments, such as those based on Excel and Access. As a matter of course I have documented my work and this describes some of the methods I have used and other methods of which I am aware. I hope that you find them to be as useful as I've found them.

Many organisations recognise the lack of documentation relating to spreadsheets within both the development and production stages. Regulators are now demanding that all processes, including those involving spreadsheets, are documented to an adequate standard. In the US, "Sarbanes Oxley" requires that all spreadsheets should have sufficient documentation to enable an independent person to understand and use the spreadsheet model. Whilst the United Kingdom’s (UK) Financial services Authority (FSA) is starting to require documentation to a level so that “a knowledgeable, professional, financially aware person with ... modelling experience [could rebuild its] model based on the documentation”.

These pages will address the issue of documentation with proposals to help improve the current culture. They will also suggest a set of core proposals, on how to document spreadsheets that can be extended as required. To aid understanding of the background some of the other available methods of documenting software will also be discussed.

I have divided these notes into two main sections:

Spreadsheet Good Practise
VBA Good Practise

The VBA section is applicable to Excel, Word, Access and any other product that uses VBA.