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.

Indeed. Sometimes it's hard not to think about gaslighting in this field.

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.