Project X - Frequently Asked Questions

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 - Gertjan Filarski & Jauco Noordzij

The WHYs

Why are you doing Project X? What am I looking at?

We founded Fourdays to improve the collaboration between domain experts and software developers. Successfully developing software requires knowledge in two domains: the subject-matter and engineering. Most members of a team are expert in one and not the other. Too often these are opposites - that regrettably don't attract. To bring people together we need them to share their knowledge in a common language. For that they need a reference - a shared platform. A lot of knowledge is lost in the translation between financial, statistical, ERP, or name-your-favorite-domain-software-here and the integrated development environments (IDEs) where engineers write their code.

If you look at one of the most commonly used domain tools (the spreadsheet) - you see our case in point. Virtually every software engineer will explain that you should not be using a spreadsheet for data analysis. For starters: because the margin for errors is too big and it forces your data in only two dimensions. These, and many others issues, are a serious cause for problems and delays in many projects. Still, the world is not going to stop using spreadsheets any time soon. They give people a huge freedom in automating data, without demanding that they learn to program. What is not to love!

With the stellar rise of data-driven decision making, the issues that engineers are warning for are becoming more and more urgent. And both sides, domain experts and software engineers, are looking at each other waiting for a solution.

Jauco and I don't believe that telling people "not to use spreadsheets" solves anything. Instead we thought: can't we build a spreadsheet that deals with the issues that engineers raise? A tool that helps you to work with data in more than two dimensions, that provides meaningful feedback when it detects mistakes, while it remains as easy to use and accessible as a spreadsheet ánd bridges the gap to data scientists and software developers?

So are you guys seriously going to build a competing spreadsheet??

We think there is space for a next generation tool that keeps the essentials of a spreadsheet, while tries to solve its many issues. We think of it as software that enables you to make calculations (like a spreadsheet) on soundly managed data (like a database), in a presentable form (like a word processor/presentation tool).

So, in short, to answer the question: Yes, and not only a competing spreadsheet, also a database and a reporting tool.

But isn't that something (smaller) ERP systems (should) do?

In our experience the one thing that all domain experts have in common is that they want to get data out of ERPs - big or small - and into a spreadsheet where they can actually work with it. We aim to replace the spreadsheet and not the ERP system, we are not that ambitious ;)

For who are you building Project X? Who are the intended users of this tool?

We aim for people working in small and medium enterprises, or in (virtually) independent medium-sized business units of larger commercial and public organizations. It is important to stress that we are aiming at the people working with the software and want to stay as close to them as possible. Especially in our initial business model. This means that we are not (yet) considering B2B/enterprise-level services. Let's see if we can first get people to use it, and enjoy using it.

The WHATs

Will it import my data?

Together with questions about our intentions and the meaning of the tool, this was the main question people asked us. The short answer is: Yes, we have to! We don't really have a choice here. The longer and more nuanced answer is of course: it depends on where your data is. But we will go to great lengths of making it easy to import or link your existing data.

I have an awful lot of data, will you be able to handle it?

That depends on what you mean with "an awful lot". All existing spreadsheets have data limits - Excel: 1.048.576 rows and 16.384 columns; Google: 18.278 columns and a maximum of 5 million cells. If 'an awful lot' means that you frequently break those boundaries: please let us know! So far we found only few real-life use cases that come anywhere near those limits. Our current, and very un-tuned, engine can easily handle tens of thousands of records and we fully expect to boost that to hundreds of thousands in the months ahead. But we are really curious how far we need to reasonably push performance. Get in touch if you have thoughts and requests!

We work in a team, can I collaborate with others?

Although the first alpha version, that we intend to open after the summer, may not yet have collaboration tools - we fully expect to add those soon after. We'll answer that one with a yes!

I need to share the results with management, will they be able to access it?

Yes, but we haven't quite settled on how to do that. We may offer a free read-only version that you can publish on the web, export to a PDF, both, or another solution. We won't of course ever simply publish your data on a public website! So we need to give some thought on protecting access.

Will my data be locked in your application?

Nope, your data will be available for download in common data format(s) that you can use in other platforms. Keep in mind that this download will probably not be available when we launch the alpha version! The alpha is intended for trials and you should never do stuff in there that you need to get (urgently) out. Really, please don't: alphas crash.

I fly a lot and need offline access, will there be a stand-alone version?

Maybe, this fully depends on user demand. It is quite an investment to support a full stand-alone version. We are definitely taking a technical route that allows us to built it though. When we do this, it may become part of an enterprise-level package. But as we said above, we are not (yet) considering to enter that market. Also, there is quite a difference between fully stand-alone and "being able to edit when the internet connection is temporarily unavailable" - let us know what your use cases are!

What formula language are you going to support? Can I use my existing spreadsheet knowledge?

Good question! We are implementing (virtually) the entire set of Excel and Google Spreadsheet formulas. We are also looking at ways to add your own custom formulas.

Other questions

Many of you wanted to know whether we would support specific functionality for: filtering, sorting, slicing, pivoting, and a gazillion others. With the alpha-release we will publish the list of features and allow you to give your opinion and votes. Based on that feedback we will prioritize our work towards a beta-version that we will make available for a wider audience.

Will you pronounce beta as "bay-ta" or "biet-a"?

We are Dutch and use the only proper pronunciation: bèhta ;)

Can we help you?

Audits & Consultancy

An extra set of eyes to see if you are where you want to be, or going where you had imagined.

Grant Acquisition

Both editing and authoring of (EU) funding proposals.

Interim Management

Temporary assignments at home or abroad to get projects and teams up to speed - or back on the rails.