What does a good research project need? Five things:

• problems — interesting, important questions ... issues worth worrying about;
• data — content, information, substance ... raw material to wrestle with;
• customers — people who care about what the project is trying to do;
• tools — from a quiet room and a pencil, all the way up to the most sophisticated technological equipment; and
• people — smart, energetic, persistent individuals.

What are the challenges that research projects must overcome in each of these categories? Many, including:

• fuzzy, ill-posed, or constantly changing questions;
• noisy, deceptive, missing, or excessive data;
• unreasonable or naïve customers;
• insufficient, incompatible, or unreliable tools; and
• incompetent, undertrained, or overloaded people.

Tuesday, November 21, 2000 at 20:48:22 (EST) = 2000-11-21

TopicOrganizations - TopicProgramming

(correlates: DarwinOnTheFossilRecord, CommonUnderstanding, FutureSymp, ...)