Behind Great Infrastructure is Excel: Experiences from a Large Engineering Project

We describe our work in developing specialized software applications to support a large collaborative engineering program. We find that despite many of the applications being bespoke efforts, designed to the requirements of the users, virtually all major applications have an unofficial spreadsheet or database backing up the official application. This spreadsheet is invariably where the actual work of the application occurs, with the official process and system being used primarily for mandated record keeping and auditing purposes. We discuss the implications of this finding for scientific collaboration and long-term record keeping.