How to trust an Excel VBA application?
A trust worthy person should be:
1. Honest & true.
2. The person is honest and true in many different situations.
3.The person is honest and true over a long period of time.
Trusting an Excel VBA application is like trusting a person. When you trust a person, you have an expectation that this person will the right thing. It’s somewhat a same situation with Excel VBA Applications. An Microsoft Excel app should also do the right thing with no errors. Trust takes time to build and it takes time to know someone well. To trust a new Excel VBA application, we need to invest time and effort to test it. To expect an Excel application to perform without a test of trust is simply asking for disasters.
Project Management: Why you always don’t have time.
In every project we undertake, we are always held hostage by two contraints: “time” and “quality”. By “we”, I mean you the sponsor and me, a contractor. Some would add “money” as another constraint but to me that’s “time” in another form.
Any project from developing a piece of software to building a house, takes some amount of time (yes, you know that). But from my observations too many times sponsors do themselves in when they have some assumptions that lead to a wrong idea of time:
* “It’s a simple task so a contractor can do this quickly”. Well if it’s that simple why you hired him in the first place?
* “The contractor can proceed immediately with implementation”. A outside contractor needs time to understand what your ideas and he needs time to form his own ideas to help you.
* “I don’t have very clear ideas about this project, but you must finish this within x weeks“. Sounds funny but I have heard this before.
The relationships between the scope of the project, time, and cost should balance. If there’s not enough time or budget, the project is doomed. (No kidding.) So in addition to good advice like “eat your vegetables” here a few more you can think about on your next project:
* You get what you give. Clear information begets good ideas. Do not hide details from your contractor. Give as much relevant information as you can from the start.
* Everything thing has a time cost. If you can’t afford the time, see what’s important to you and do those first.
* A successful project comes from the combined strengths of sponsor and contractor not the weaknesses.
* The best clients pick from a wide pool of contractors.
* Likewise, the best contractors pick from a wide pool of clients.
The strengths of Excel vs Access
As development consultants, we often get the question: “Should we do this project in Access or Excel?”. We can certainly see that is this is valid question to ponder in many business oriented projects that have database and reporting needs.
Let’s take a look at the strengths of each software:
Access is a very capable database software. It can handle millions of transactional records in split seconds. What’s more, the database can be easily shared among 256 users in a networked-drive. For more specific needs, you can write VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) applications to process this huge amount of data and make them accessible to an entire department or a small company.
Excel on the other hand is a spreadsheet software. It is an excellent way to store business data and perform calculations right on your screen.Excel information is organised as “sheets” much like a large piece of paper. Users will find it easy to learn and use Excel in daily business. In fact it is the de-facto business software for most analysts. But you will discover that it is difficult (but not impossible) to share this information beyond your desktop.
So how do we make an intelligent choice?
Both softwares can store large amounts of data but you’ll find that Excel is much better at calculating and presenting this information to users compared to Access. Before you decide between Access or Excel, you should think about what benefits do you want:
1. A database-oriented application for storing and processing records
OR
2. A document-oriented application to store and present information to users.
In most business-reporting requirements, Excel is a good development choice because it has strong record storage and processing abilities, while at the same time information is easily displayed in a flexible grid manner.
What is an Independent Contractor?
Having worked as an independent contractor for Excel VBA development for a number of years, I would like to share some useful expereinces for people who drop by my site and prospective clients. Firstly, I define an independent contractor as someone who who offers their time and skill over a limited engagement in exchange for compensation.
There are a number of good reasons you would want to hire someone from the outside to develop your Excel spreadsheets. Mainly to do with reducing overall costs and risks.
An independent contractor is hired only for the duration of a project and his engagement will end once the project finishes. Cost wise, you are only paying for his expertise for a limited duration. For small and mid sized projects, this is a very cost effective compared to hiring someone into your employment.
When you hire an independent contractor for a project, a well written service contract governs the rules of interaction with contractor and a view to acheive a certain set of visible end objectives. This service contract should have convenient termination clauses that allows both parties to terminate the project in a fair and amicable manner.
