Shared repo for Harvard Extension School E99 West-East project team
(listed alphabetically)
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Mark F. | Server |
| Alan O. | Server |
| Sean S. | Client |
| Tim S. | Client |
| S. Alexander Z. | Client + Server |
| Robert Z. | Advisor |
George Heilmeier was a special assistant to the Secretary of Defense as well as a scientist, inventor, and engineer. He liked to begin projects by asking the following questions. Failure to provide good answers indicated that the project was either not ready to receive funding or doomed.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon. | We are building a tool for use by biologists to assist in the preparation of experiments and the analysis of the results. |
| How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice? | There is a mix of manual and automated systems, but neither scales well or provides good tooling for this domain. There are some tools available but they don't scale well financially due to their high per user licensing cost. |
| What's new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful? | We'll provide a central repository for components of the experiments and user friendly tools to manage different configurations. It will be successful since scientists are in need to tools specific to this domain that automate their workflow. |
| Who cares? | Biologists that have little to no tooling or are lacking big budgets to buy existing tools will care. Big-pharma will care because it could reduce the cost of new drug development by accelerating the workflows that screen the components for possible new drugs. |
| If you're successful, what difference will it make? | Eliminating compounds earlier in the discovery cycle saves millions of dollars. |
| What are the risks and the payoffs? | Primary risk is attempting to overreach in 1.0 or our version of 1.0. The payoffs are that we all get an A. |
| How much will it cost? | ~ 200 man hours |
| How long will it take? | 12 weeks |
| What are the midterm and final "exams" to check for success? | Midterm exam is the presentation of our Statement of Work (SOW). Final exam is the presentation to the faculty panel. Our system must work as described in the SOW. |