PraxIS July 2004

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Welcome to PraxIS

What's most interesting item in this month's newsletter? Email me to vote for your favourite; or, reality-TV style, to vote out the least interesting!

Do me a favour - tell a news, business, or travel portal about my euro-based foreign exchange calculator!

Patrick O'Beirne

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1)  IT Risk and Security

IT Governance download from http://www.itgi.org/

The IT Governance Institute (ITGI) exists to assist enterprise leaders in their responsibility to ensure that IT goals align with those of the business, it delivers value, its performance is measured, its resources properly allocated and its risks mitigated....

A new research document from the ITGI reflecting the latest thinking on this increasingly global topic that will have the greatest impact on an organization in the short to medium term. Based on COBIT control objectives, the authors designed this publication primarily as an educational resource for IT control professionals, but it is also of critical importance to the CIO, IT management and assurance professional. Download PDF (357k)

This research is intended as a reference for executive management and IT control professionals, including IT management and assurance professionals, when evaluating an organization’s IT controls as required by the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (the “Act”).

Business Continuity Maturity Model free download

Virtual Corporation Inc has provided a public domain diagnostic tool for objective evaluation of business continuity program effectiveness. The levels are:

1. Self-governed
2. Supported self-governed
3. Cooperatively governed
4. Enterprise awakening
5. Planned growth

You can download the 1.1MB 62-page PDF from http://www.virtual-corp.net/html/bcmm_intro.html

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2) Sites seen, notes from the blog

Amazon's A9 search service

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The Irish inventor of the ISBN coding system

I quote the introductory paragraph:

STANDARD NUMBERING IN THE BOOK TRADE
"Author: A Report by F. G. Foster. Introduction: The Publishers Association carried out in 1966 an inquiry into the feasibility of the adoption by the U.K. book trade of a standard system of numbering all book titles. The conclusion that has been reached is that there is a clear need for the introduction of standard numbering, and that substantial benefits will accrue to all parties therefrom. The following is a summary of the scheme and report on its implementation to date. "

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3) Ageism in IT

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4) Spreadsheets

My talk to ISACA on Spreadsheet Quality

http://www.isaca.org.uk/northern/events.htm  I gave a talk to the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, Northern England Chapter Meeting on 23 June 2004 on "Spreadsheet Quality". If you'd like the presentation to your professional association, let me know. I also do half day presentations and full-day courses (including hands-on practice) that can be delivered in-house.

I have been asked about Test Driven Development as it may apply to spreadsheets. My article in PraxIS May 2004 described a tool that could be used for that purpose, XLSior. Here is another article which picks up on the Agile theme as it may apply to end-user development:

Agile Spreadsheet Development (ASD)

Because of the pressures of compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley Act, managers are now looking for good advice on how to reduce information risk and manage the end-user development hydra. This article suggests how IT managers can help users to improve their process so that they save time by making fewer mistakes and endure less of the pain and cost of bad practice.

Spreadsheet development is often an ad hoc solution to an immediate end-user need that the IT department are not able or willing to satisfy in the time frame required. For such reasons, it is the original agile development environment, the tool of choice for end-user computing.

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Spreadsheet Risks Conference July 15-16 2004

Book your place now for the 2004 European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group Annual Conference in Klagenfurt, Austria, July 15-16. This will be the most packed conference yet, Eusprig had a difficult job selecting the top papers for presentation, and decided to offer a tutorial session on Wed Jul 14 to assist those new to assessing spreadsheet risk. Web site: eusprig.org

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5) Spreadsheet Detective mini-review

www.SpreadsheetDetective.com Southern Cross Software, Queensland, Australia.

It's remarkable how many spreadsheet auditing tools come from Down Under (from our point of view!). The Spreadsheet Detective is pretty well the original of the species, so I'll review it first. I understand that a new version is imminent, so this review may be out of date by the time you read it.

The core features of the tool are:-
· Show which cells have unique formulas and how they have been copied.
· Make formulas easier to understand using automatically created range names.
· Visualize all formulas on a worksheet using concise graphical annotations.
· Reveal the linkages between worksheets in complex workbooks.
· Automated sensitivity analysis to detect most/least sensitive inputs.
· Compare different versions of a worksheet or workbook.
· Utilities to help manage Named Ranges.

Their demo workbook begins with a challenge: "Can you find all the errors in even this simple spreadsheet?" Excel 2002 flags some cells with little green triangles in the top left corner, but none of those are the errors! The solution is shown by their shading tool that highlights which are the cells out of pattern with the rest. (I prefer the formula-pattern colouring system of SpACE, but that's for another review.)

The Autoname tool documents cells by combining row and column headings to create more descriptive names, e.g. a tooltip might show "=E33'Sales - E34'CostOfGoodsSold".  By showing the names right on the spreadsheet errors become more obvious. This obviously depends on how carefully the user has provided labels for the rows and columns. It makes more sense when you know the business purpose of the worksheet.

Range names are also used to create cell comments that help to make it plain whether the range name is correct in context. You should first learn carefully the definitions of what the various special annotation symbols mean, otherwise the shorthand just looks confusing.

These annotations are not only in cell comments but can be added visibly for printing purposes.  An auditor would find this useful in reading the spreadsheet offline with a user familiar with the worksheet or problem domain. Even easier for this purpose (to my mind) is a Formula report that lists the schemas, statistics, and a rather basic map of the cells.

Each sheet has a Statistics table placed at the bottom that shows the number of "schemas" (unique formulas) and a list of those that may require special attention in review, e.g. references to non-numeric cells, constants, and formulas that are large or unprotected.

The Interworksheet report is as far as I know unique to the Spreadsheet Detective. It is a cross-tabulation of the count of references among the sheets. So it is a kind of map that can help show how well the data flow is structured, or whether the links flow in a recommended unidirectional manner.

Further, a Workbook Precedent Report shows the links between workbooks, which is helpful documentation for large models that incorporate multiple spreadsheet files.

A Sensitivity report automates the testing process by making a small change in every input cell and showing its influence on an outcome cell. So if you find that some cells have no relationship to the output, you may want to check that!

As with other tools I have reviewed in Praxis, Spreadsheet Detective has:

• a Range Name Manager which makes it easier to rename local, global, and hidden range names;
• a utility to Compare Worksheets which can cope with inserted and deleted rows or columns;
• a report that documents precedents or dependents in an expandable outline;
• many red-highlight markers that warn about bad practice such as circular references, non-numeric references, unlocked formulas, and complex formulas;
• tools to assist in understanding and debugging array functions.

In summary, this is a very capable tool, and it still amazingly works with Excel 95.  There are more expensive tools such as SpACE and ExChecker that I will be reviewing in future issues of PraxIS. If you need help now with tools and training for spreadsheet model assessments and can't wait for the reviews, contact me.

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FEEDBACK

Simply send your comments to FEEDBACK (at) SYSMOD (dot) COM

If you like the newsletter, a great way to show your support is to make your next book or CD purchase from our Amazon shop page!

Thank you! Patrick O'Beirne, Editor

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6) On the lighter side

http://www.boreme.com/bm/MAR04/a/t_taxman/jump_fr.htm

The "Bore me" archive of viral emails lists this little missive that will strike a familiar chord with taxpayers everywhere, not just those who allegedly communicate with Her Majesty's department of Inland Revenue in this manner. When I got it, I forwarded it to a couple of people as a TGIF, only to receive an automated reply from a government agency "A message you sent has been blocked for content" - oops!

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Patrick O'Beirne, Editor
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