I spent two weeks last January staring at a spreadsheet with 12,000 rows, each one representing a feature request from a customer. The columns were a mess: tags crammed into one cell, status fields half the team ignored, and a priority score nobody trusted.
When Cells Stop Making Sense
The breaking point came during sprint planning. Our PM filtered by "High Priority" and got 3,400 results. That is not a filter; that is a cry for help. We needed linked records between customers and requests, color-coded status tags that updated across views, and one base that could become a kanban board on Monday and a calendar on Friday.