The spreadsheet has become production infrastructure
What's actually going wrong
The same exports, lookups, reconciliations, and formula chains run every week. The workbook still works, but changes are risky, failures are hard to trace, and the process depends on whoever understands the logic buried inside it.
What we'd change
Trace the workbook back to its source systems, then separate the useful interface from the production logic. Keep the spreadsheet where it works for people; move repeated ingestion, transformations, and shared metrics into versioned pipelines and tested models.
It's worth fixing when
- The same exports are produced every cycle.
- Important calculations span long, fragile formula chains.
- Several versions must be reconciled before anyone trusts the result.
- Routine reporting depends on one person knowing how the workbook works.
