I can’t count the number of demos I’ve seen that were “small team, multiple sprints” to produce something that could have been done in a lazy afternoon in excel by a single person.
It’s a common pattern in enterprise IT to take a useful spreadsheet and turn it into an application. Without fail, they turn into a forever chase of excel features re-implemented (and poorly) on some front end. Entire teams dedicated to features that would be two clicks away in excel ootb.
Yes, I have already three such projects on my CV, failed attempts to replace Excel.
The root cause for failure is always the same, not understanding all use cases for 100% of the department users instead of only the representative group present during UI/UX sessions, coupled with the human natural resistance to change.
