Planning a Financial Model – Define Team Roles
Right at the start a good financial analyst should assign responsibilities for the detailed management of the financial model build process.
One person should be in charge overall but may delegate modules to different team members working in parallel. Only the responsible person should make changes to the structure of each module: names, cells formulas, etc.
The financial analyst with overall responsibility must structure each module and organise and manage the flow of information between spreadsheet worksheets, modules and computers.
Define clearly the scope and objectives of the financial model and the scenarios that will be analyzed to the users and eventual audience of the financial model results. Be sure to be clear on your role in relation to the users and audience of the financial model results.
A good financial analyst should be able to manage several client interfaces at different levels and maintain overall control of the financial modeling project. Resist tendency of getting sucked into taking on more and more responsibilities – financial modelers are usually perceived to be on the critical path.
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It is hard for me to imagine delegating model construction “by module.” Yes, some tasks might be delegated. But, there needs to be a single architect at the helm of the project or the construct validity of the model will likely disapate. Achieving construct validity requires that the modeler think in terms of R^2 rather than the aggregation of r^2 results. Said another way, construct validity is the resultant of (a+b+c)^2, and not (a^2)+(b^2)+(c^2). I’m not clear how one can delegate the validation requirement.