Classifying spreadsheet users
Vertex42 The Excel Nexus
Over the years, I've found that it's often useful to classify people who use spreadsheets (including both developers and end users) along two dimensions: their degree of experience with spreadsheets and their interest in learning about spreadsheets.
To keep things simple, each of these two dimensions has three levels. Combining them results in nine combinations, which are shown in Table 5-1. In reality, only seven segments are worth thinking about because both moderately experienced and very experienced spreadsheet users generally have at least some interest in spreadsheets. (After all, that's what motivated them to get their experience.) Users who have a lot of spreadsheet experience and a low level of interest would make very bad developers.
Table 5-1 CLASSIFICATION OF SPREADSHEET USERS BY EXPERIENCE AND INTEREST
Little Experience Moderately Experienced Very Experienced
No Interest
Moderately Interested
User User User
Very
Interested
User/Potential Developer
Developer
Developer
It should be clear that spreadsheet developers must have a great deal of experience with spreadsheets as well as a high interest in spreadsheets. Those with little spreadsheet experience, but with a great deal of interest, are potential developers. All they need is more experience. If you're reading this book, you probably fall into one of the boxes in the last column of the table.
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