164 Understanding the Numbers
more than a few people and more than a few dozen steps, one should consider
using project management software to help with the planning and control of
the activities.
Project management software allows a manager to plan for and then con-
trol the steps in a project with an eye toward managing the people working and
resources being spent on the project. Good project-management software can
help a manager foresee bottlenecks or constraints in a plan and can help the
manager bring the project to completion in the shortest possible time.
One popular tool for managing projects is Microsoft Project. Exhibit 5.6
shows a typical screen from Microsoft Project, which shows the steps in a proj-
ect along with a graphical representation of those steps called a GAANT char t.
NETWORKING
Another electronic advent of the 1990s was extensive networking, or intercon-
necting, of computers, which has facilitated the sharing and exchanging of in-
formation. The interconnecting may be done through wires within a building;
via the telephone system using modems; or through radio frequency transmis-
sions between the computers using wireless modems.There are several differ-
ent approaches, or types of architecture, for computer networks. In a small
office environment with only a few computers, the computers might be con-
necting in what is referred to as a peer-to-peer network. Here all the computers
function on the same level as peers or equals to each other. Peer-to-peer net-
working software comes built into Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edi-
tion (ME), making it relatively easy to set up a peer-to-peer network between
two or more PCs. All one needs is a network adapter card in each computer,
the cables for connecting the computers, and a connecting piece of hardware
called a hub.
However, in a larger networking environment (dozens, hundreds, or even
thousands of computers hooked together), the situation is more complex. In
this case, the most common network architecture is called a client-server net-
work. To deal with the added complexity, in a client-server network there is a
hierarchy of computers with a host or file server acting as the traffic police-
man, storing common data and directing the network traffic. In this architec-
ture, the user computer is frequently referred to as the clientin the network. A
picture of a typical client-server network appears in Exhibit 5.7.
As mentioned earlier, the file server is the centerpiece of the network,
and the software that makes the network operate is called the network operat-
ing system. Novell’s NetWare and Microsoft’s Windows 2000 (formerly Win-
dows NT) are two popular network operating systems. Within a business the
typical network is called a local area network, or LAN. Clients are connected
to the server, using wires or fiber-optic cables. Transmission speeds are gener-
ally either 10 or 100 megabytes per second. As with the peer-to-peer network,
there is a hub that acts as a concentrator for all of the cabling. Again, each PC