Sidebar on information management tools

By Donald Jenner

For most projects -- for design-oriented ones, second only to the design tools (CAD or whatever) -- the micro-based spreadsheet is the most important item in the project-planning repertoire.

Spreadsheets handle cost information neatly and are generally familiar tools to most microcomputer users.  For the professional preparing documentation, spreadsheets come in two flavors: those that work with the rest of the tool-kit and those that don't.  The best spreadsheet is one that can be "hot-linked" to the writing environment.  

An excellent example is Microsoft's Excel.  Because this is a native Windows product -- and because Microsoft wrote it (a matter which has excited some nasty comments) -- it can take advantage of the Windows hot-link options, most notably DDE.  The importance is this:  Change the numbers in the spreadsheet, and the linked table in the writing environment is updated automatically.  At this point, Excel has the edge; the number-one product, Lotus 1-2-3, is promised in a Windows version before year-end.  An alternative, Informix's Wingz, offers more features, but seems more appropriate for developers of database/spreadsheet applications.

Spreadsheets can consolidate information from the design system database -- most write data formats which are accepted directly -- and project-planning data.  Some CAD programs hot-link to spreadsheets; AutoDesk's AutoCAD for OS/2, for example, links in such a way that changes to the drawing are reflected in the linked Excel spreadsheet.  Whatever the linkage process, the importance lies in an orderly acquisition of information about a given design project, to which the requisite budget information can be added.  That is, a given widget includes so many fardels as such-and-such a price.

Project-planning software is useful when the project has more than one component and is constrained, by time and resources.  Unfortunately, none of the project-planning programs is particularly easy to use.  Microsoft's Project for Windows has justly gotten high marks for ease of use in trade magazine surveys; it has easy data export to spreadsheets, but it is an older product in the Microsoft line-up, so the current version does not have hot-link capability.  We found Software Publishing Corp.'s Harvard Project Manager, in its most recent versions, corrected earlier deficiencies and added a very nice, direct and intuitive way to constrain project elements by date -- useful, given the importance of suspense dates in contracts.  Computer Associates' SuperProject Expert seemed overpowering -- a view supported in published surveys; it proved difficult to learn, and its project-outlining feature is more tricky to use than that in Project.  Its strength is in on-screen reporting and print-out (CA includes Sideways, a utility for printing very wide reports on continuous-form paper; this means no paste-up of partial charts).

This project-manager market should get more interesting, with two Windows products (simple and full-featured variants) from Symantec promised for later this year, as well as a powerful product from Ajida.  Microsoft is sure to push forward with an upgraded version of its own product in response.  

Finally, good spreadsheet data is the foundation of good graphical representation of that data.  The graph is an interpretive tool -- it makes data into information.  That graph can be used in live presentations, through the medium of presentation graphics programs such as Micrografx Charisma or Cricket Presents, or in conjunction with conventional drawing programs such as Micrografx Designer, Corel Draw or Arts & Letters Editor for incorporation in more sophisticated visual representation.  That same graph is used in the printed documentation.  The documentation which starts as a presentation leave-behind (stretching the presentation from minutes to hours of client contact...) can grow naturally into a complete tool for project implementation, for keeping the project on track.

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