In Stephen Covey’s ‘7 habits of highly effective people’ he refers to an exhausted man trying ineffectively to saw down a tree. When asked why he doesn’t stop to sharpen his saw, the man replies “I don’t have time to sharpen the saw, I’m too busy sawing!”. In my experience, most IT teams are like the man with the blunt saw – they don’t take the time to improve their processes and tools and this leads to staff burn-out and declining IT performance.

When conducting business process maturity assessments, we sometimes find spreadsheets supporting vital business functions. More often than not, these spreadsheets are unsecured, unbacked-up and unsupported by IT. 

So, when is it appropriate to use Excel and when does it present an unacceptable risk to your organisation? The easiest way to answer this question is to first explain Excel's pros and cons.

Dave O'Reardon was recently invited to present to the Victorian chapter of the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF). Having led a major IT performance improvement program at an ASX Top 100 company, Dave's presentation, titled "The Biggest Bang for your ITIL Buck", focused on the program initiatives that delivered the most value to IT and the business.

 Click here to view the slides.