Cat Herding and Community Gardens: Practical e-Science Project Management

Slide 1: Cat Herding and Community Gardens: Practical e-Science Project Management Managing for Usability: Challenges and Opportunities for E-Science Project Management 10-11 April 2008, Oxford Neil Chue Hong Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 2: In a sense, this is what we do… Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 3: Managing People is like Herding Cats • Dave Platt, referring to managing senior programmers origins of phrase lost o now used everywhere o • Co-ordinating skilled people with differing personal goals within a difficult situation Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 4: But what we want is Community Gardens • Jointly cultivated by groups • Responsive and responsible to immediate community • Pooled resources and experience • Collectively organised • Learn and trade from other communities • Sustainable on lower resources and input • "I no longer complain about the poor quality; I do something about it." See: S. Chaplowe, Havana's Popular Gardens: • Sustainable Urban Agriculture, World Sustainable Agriculture Association, Fall 1996, Vol. 5, No. 22 Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 5: How do you stop herding cats? … and start cultivating gardens? Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 6: OMII-UK: Software Solutions for e-Research • OMII-UK provides software and support to enable a sustained future for the UK e-Science community and its international collaborators. Core support and development: o £7.8 million Commissioned Software o Programme: £1.4 million ENGAGE: improving access to e- o Infrastructure: £0.9 million Phase II: 2006 - 2009 o Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 7: OMII-UK: For all kinds of users Taverna: effortless workflows for scientists OGSA-DAI: data integration for service providers Campus Grid Toolkit: easy to install grid for job submission PAG: AG videoconferencing for anyone Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 8: OMII-UK: What we do and how we do it 5% (37%) Commissioning (15%) 21% 37% PALs Community Development 10% ENGAGE Outreach Support (100%) 7% Evaluation + QA 20% Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 9: The Four Levels of e-Science Enlightenment • 1) Resources: Providing access to a larger and wider diversity • 2) Automation: Repeatability and management of experiments • 3) Collaboration: Intra + cross disciplinary networks • 4) Participation: Increasing access to a wider set of users; increasing knowledge in a domain Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 10: Why are e-Science projects different? • Researchers + User Satisfaction Computer Scientists + Software Developers • Many PIs • Few sanctions Cool Research Code Progress • Lack of common goal • Need to engage users Job Stability Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 11: Have a common goal • Or you will always be herding cats! • Decide or define this goal with your team • Understand how you will reach the goal together • This is the hardest thing to achieve but also the most effective a common goal means a common direction o Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 12: Balancing priorities against a goal Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 13: People power • Social engineering is the key Get the organisation right o Push decisions down to the right level o • “Too many chiefs” in most eScience projects Understand your teams o • Different people like working in different ways • Make sure they’ve met face to face • Go to the pub Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 14: A typical e-Science project organisation? Steering Group Investigators 10 partners Project Managers Researchers Developers Students Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 15: One for all and all for one • Everyone is remote once one is remote • We don’t need heroes in a team • Collective responsibility still requires owners • Competition is good, so go one better Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 16: Dashboards in your common infrastructure Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 17: Little by little • Agility is all big, complex projects = high risk of failure o adopting incremental approaches to requirements, o design, and implementation helps minimise risk • don’t timebox research, but do timebox development delivering small increments regularly is good o • good for quality, for visibility, for morale • Keep your eyes on the road keep an active eye on project risks o Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 18: What I really, really want • Requirements, requirements, requirements write ‘em down! Give ‘em numbers! o remember, requirements aren’t just functional! o whatever they are, they are always testable o everything can’t be a high priority! o • Make sure you can understand their worth real users better than good ideas o user groups focus development o do just enough to make it work o • How do you effectively engage users in a distributed team? Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 19: Results of actions from last cycle Intelligence Analysis Group Honest (independent?) assessment of components User Requirements analysis e.g. SUPER Implement Software Catalogue registrations Send people out to communities actions User surveys and followups “NERC community are Performance/Useability going to stop using our Customer requests products if we don’t fix User forum bottlenecks in our workflow” “If we form an alliance with e- Minerals then Suggest we can build Intelligence developer actions Ops tools which will Analysis be useful” Group Digest intelligence Suggest Prioritise Management priorities actions Remit: make the best use of the available intelligence information to produce a three monthly digest Composition: 1 from Ops, 1 from Management 1 from each site team (one Chairs)

Slide 20: Handling relationships Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 21: ENGAGE: developing new users of e-Infrastructure • JISC funded, OMII-UK and NGS • Work with e-IUS/e-Uptake, Use and Deployment follow up on SUPER, target individual research groups Capture research scenarios Development o and Integration E Collaborate on e-Infrastructure o AG designs G EN Implementation and deployment o Interventions • Aim to create specific examples of research benefit from e- Training Design Support Infrastructure • Get “non e-Science” groups to Document and Disseminate participate Study Practice, Barriers, Enablers and Requirements Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 22: Make it easy for others • Document! Document! Document! Imagine trying to program without a language reference o • structure and stability is good Get people who like writing documents to do them o • but get everyone to doc their code • A single editor can provide guidance Good code documentation can be used by the tooling o Good human documentation will win your users support o • Make sure you don’t underestimate the cost code maintenance takes longer than code development o • make it part of the process • Keep things transparent and available knowledge shared is easier for your community and easier for your o team Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 23: A good workman… • Know your tools Good tools can increase productivity o • CVS, Ant, Bugzilla, Rational Rose, … use what suits Communication tools are as effective as code tools o • IRC/IM, Wiki’s, website, email The best tools are the ones which people use o • being prescriptive doesn’t always work • What to do when software you rely on changes? Know your versions! o • DLL hell, JAR war, … Don’t expect others to be sympathetic o • keep packages small (common, core, client, interfaces) Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 24: And for my final tip • Balance the hype eScience project management is about vision vs effort vs o requests researchers, developers, users and funders are all o different • and all want different things • get it right for one community first • Don’t mess with your users it has to install easily o examples and tooling help o support is better o being responsive is best o Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk

Slide 25: So just remember • Have a common goal • People power • One for all, and all for one Little by little • • What I really, really, want Balance the hype • • Go to the pub Web: www.omii.ac.uk Email: info@omii.ac.uk