Thursday 15 November 2012

The Proteome Browser mentioned in WIRED

The Proteome Browser being developed by the AP32 team at Monash University for the global proteomics community has been mentioned in an article about the Human Proteome in "The WIRED World in 2013" - a 'what's hot in 2013' special issue from WIRED magazine:






The full issue is:

• downloadable from within the Wired UK app on iTunes/Kindle/Android
• downloadable from tinyurl.com/wiredworld2013
• on sale in shops now

Wednesday 17 October 2012

Key Apps Deliverable #8 - Final Product Post


All Applications projects have a common deliverable "Deposit of the software in an open source code repository such as Google Code, SourceForge or GitHub, ... ".  (it is usually numbered D8). To meet this deliverable, a Final  Product Report is required.  There are two options:

Option 1: 
For projects that chose not to blog, please ask your ANDS contact for the report template.
Please note that even if you choose this "non-public" version,  your ANDS contact may write a post for the ANDS Applications blog site based on the content you provide in the report. 

Option 2:
For projects that chose to blog, please write and publish a post to your Blog. The post should cover the following aspects:


1.     Introductory Product Information
·         The Name of your product (note: this can be different from the name of your project, especially if the name is more understandable/interesting for the user of the product)
·         The primary users of your product, e.g., researchers (what fields / areas?), policy makers, etc.
·         A simple "elevator pitch" for your product directed at your users that explains what problem or what situation your product is going to solve for them.

2.     Instructional Product Information

·         What is the use case for how the product is going to be used? Please tell a real story of how this product has been used by your users (e.g. Research and/or Policy Champion) and the real world effect it has had upon them. Don't be afraid to talk about a real user (with their permission) and quote what the user said for context.
·         Links to the actual product. This could be to several different "things", for example: If the product is an application for downloading on a computer or phone, a link to where the app can be downloaded, e.g. perhaps create a nice button to click on to signify this is the product.
·         Step-by-step end user documentation: this should include links to the project blog as well as to   the public source code repository. Please explain to them in a step-by-step way how they actually can start using the product right now. This could be in the form of a screencast or an Ikea-like instructional manual or any other clear guidance for how your intended user can use this product right now. (e.g. http://jcu-eresearch.github.com/Edgar/userguide.html and http://intersectaustralia.github.io/ap11/blog/2013/04/30/final-product/).
·      Technical documentation (NB if you are using the a blog for your living SRS, then this should just be a matter of listing links as a table of contents for how the technical documentation relates to the final product).  Naturally these links should also reference the links to the files within the Source Code repository as it relates to the final product.
·         Don't forget pictures or (simple) diagrams for 'selling' the product to the user. If you have authorized testimonials from users, you could link to those.

3.  Product (or Product Components) Re-usability Information

·         If a product or its components can be reused in other contexts, please specify the reusable components and describe in which contexts they are reusable.

4.     Contextual Product Information

·         Licensing of final product, this should include both creative commons and any applicable code licenses, as well as a declaration by the team for how their commitment to assuring the product is available beyond the life of the product for reuse by others.
·         Sustainability: A deliberate effort should be made to explain the ongoing status of the product (under active development, in maintenance mode, orphaned, mature, etc).


The ‘final product posts’ should be simplified and made easy to understand by others in the sector.  Accordingly, ANDS will organise a panel of previous ANDS projects to review and provide (private) feedback to the project on their final product.  Therefore your 'final product post' should act as a product advertisement that will engage a range of users working in Academia.

Please assign the following TAGS to your post: andsFinalProduct,  andsApps,  andsProduct,  fundedByAustralianNationalDataService, DIISRTE, {your project's acronym or tag}, {your ANDS project code, e.g. AP67}, {any other keyword tags you can think of that will help your project be discovered by like-minded projects}.


Monday 8 October 2012

Key Apps Deliverable #5 - Deployed, tested and documented software system

All Applications projects have a common deliverable "Deployed, tested and documented software that:  ...".  (it is usually numbered D5). To meet this deliverable, a User Acceptance Testing Report is required.  There are two options:

Option 1: 
For projects that chose not to blog, please ask your ANDS contact for the report template.
Please note that even if you choose this "non-public" version,  your ANDS contact may write a post for the ANDS Applications blog site based on the content you provide in the report. 

Option 2:
For projects that chose to blog, please write and publish a post to your Blog. The post should cover the following aspects:

1.     The Application
What does the software application do? -  You could e.g. describe the application in a series of screendumps / illustrations with some accompanying explanations, or if the software application is web-accessible, a link to the application with accompanying explanations.

For an example, please see  http://jcu-eresearch.github.com/Edgar/Management/2012/08/29/announcing-edgar/

2.     Who are the Users and the Testers?
What are the typical groups / types of users?
What are the user characteristics of each user group?
What are main tasks that each user type / group will perform with the application?
Please list / name the testers who have been involved in the User Acceptance Testing, and specify which user group a tester represents. If you do not want to make that information public, you can anonymize the users for the Blog, and provide their names to your ANDS contact. 

3.     Testing Methods and Findings
How did your project involve the users / testers in the application’s design and testing process? 
What were the testing methods employed?  (e.g. observation of researchers’ / users’ workflows, workshops with researchers / users, exploratory interviews with researchers / users, and / or usability testing of an evolving design).
If you have had phased releases of software, please outline this information for each phase.

Here is an example: http://jcu-eresearch.github.com/Edgar/Development/2012/08/08/user-interface-testing/

4.     Findings and Lessons Learned
Please summarize briefly  what worked and what didn’t work with the interface and the application development process.
Were the users’ needs met? 
Please quote what users said about the application, for example, in terms of usefulness, future improvements and their intention of  using the application in future,  etc.



Please assign the following TAGS to your post: andsUserAcceptance, andsOutputs, andsProduct, andsApps,  fundedByAustralianNationalDataService, DIISRTE, {your project's acronym or tag}, {your ANDS project code, e.g. AP67}, {any other keyword tags you can think of that will help your project be discovered by like-minded projects}.

Thursday 13 September 2012

The Proteome Browser has been featured in Australian Life Scientist and demonstrated at the HUPO World Congress in Boston




One of our Apps projects, the "Proteome Browser", which is being developed for the International Proteomics Community by Monash University, was featured in a recent article in Australian Life Scientist in which Prof Ian Smith was interviewed about the Chromosome-centric Human Proteome Project (C-HPP) initiative and The Proteome Browser. 

Click on the link above to read the article (a pdf version is also available from the AP32 project blog).

Additionally, the Proteome Browser was recently demonstrated by Prof Ed Nice and Rob Goode from the Monash team at the Human Proteome Organisation (HUPO) 11th Annual World Congress in Boston. Check out the pics on the AP32 Proteome Browser blog of Ed and Rob in action.

Monday 27 August 2012

An ANDS-funded CliMDDIR project to provide up-to-date data for more accurate climate change impacts researches


 An ANDS funded project, Climate Model Downscaling Data For Impacts And Adaptation Research (CliMDDIR, AP04), has just announced software connection for its project web portal. The project aims  to provide climate change impacts researchers with high resolution RCM-derived datasets in a timely manner and in a useful format.

The project is building a software system that will allow climate impacts researchers identifying and examining suitable downscaled climate change data sets,   manipulate the data to add value, and export data in formats useful to their research. The targeted impacts research areas may include: agriculture, hydrology, health and ecology impacts. The researchers from the areas have been closely involved into the software development.

 Here is what  Dr. Linda Beaumont from Macquarie University was talking about a data problem faced by climate impacts researchers and why getting the CliMDDIR data matters to the researchers:

 "The impacts community has lacked consistent tools, with data being delivered in a variety of formats and at a coarse resolution that has often made them difficult to use.  The CliMDDIR project will allow us to get our hands on up-to-date data and make more accurate assessments of climate change impacts. Currently, there is a substantial time-lag between when climate modellers develop data and when it becomes available to the impacts community in a useable format. CliMMDIR will significantly reduce this time-lag. ”

 Read more about the project and what Dr. Linda Beaumont says ...

Monday 23 July 2012

Two more Apps funded software products under development now described in RDA


Recently, two more of the data integration and analysis software products that are being developed in the ANDS Apps program have been described in Research Data Australia (RDA):



Edgar: Climate Change Impact on the Distributions of Australian Bird Species (under development at James Cook University), which will provide users with access to projected environmental suitability maps for Australian Bird species under various climate change scenarios as well as the  "cleaned" occurrence records used to generate the maps. The site will provide visualisations of the datasets as well as download facilities. 
The accompanying rainforest vertebrates of the Australia Wet Tropics (location & abundance) dataset is also described in RDA along with various grants that have funded the generation of the input data.

and


TissueStack (under development at the Centre for Advanced Imaging at the University of Queensland), a software system that will allow the integration and overlay of multiple, multi-modal imaging 3D datasets, corresponding classical anatomy information and accompanying metadata, and an analysis environment to compare and quantify differences between multiple biological specimens (e.g. wild-type vs. disease specimens).
The accompanying average wild-type C57BL/6J mouse 3D MRI brain image dataset that can be viewed using TissueStack is also described in RDA, along with various people and organisations and grants associated with the generation of this brain image data.

Sunday 1 July 2012

"Project Blogging 101" webinar recording

Recently we hosted a webinar about Project Blogging to help our partners who are blogging newbies feel a bit more comfortable about the technology, logistics and philosophy of maintaining a project blog. The webinar was recorded and is now available for viewing on the ANDS vimeo channel: http://vimeo.com/44434161

We'd like to especially thank Marianne Brown and Daniel Baird from JCU for participating and talking about their experiences of creating and maintaining their Edgar project blog.

If you couldn't make it on the day and have any questions, please get in touch with Stefanie, Ming or Jeff.

More info about project blogging can also be found in earlier entries of our Apps blog too.

Wednesday 20 June 2012

Recorded ANDS presentations from Apps Day #2

If you were at Apps Community Day #2 in Melbourne you will have noticed the talks were being recorded, including the following presentations from the ANDS staff:




Topic

Presenter
Recording
Slides
ANDS and Apps background, ANDS expectations around Demonstrations of Value


Andrew Treloar
ANDS Data Model and high-level RIF-CS overview


Andrew Treloar
ANDS project lifecycle and process


Jeff Christiansen
ANDS Core Deliverables


Stefanie Kethers
ANDS Supporting services and Who can Help?


Andrew Treloar
Apps RIF-CS and how to make manual sample RIF-CS records in RDA


Jeff Christiansen

NOTE: The recordings of our partners discussing their projects (from both Apps Day #1 and #2) can be found by following the links on the 'list of projects' page

Wednesday 13 June 2012

Tropical Data Hub Launch at JCU


Senator Chris Evans, the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research, recently launched the Tropical Data Hub (TDH), http://tropicaldatahub.org, at James Cook University in Townsville. The Tropical Data Hub aims to provide research-relevant data and information related to the Tropics worldwide. ANDS has provided funding for the TDH through the Apps program, with additional funding from the Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation, QCIF.

Ming and I were involved in some background help to JCU in preparation to the launch, including identifying outstanding records related to the Tropics in RDA, and providing comments on the TDH Web site. We now know a lot about Tropical records in RDA!

Thanks to Catherine Brady from ANDS, there is also now a Tropic Topic page in Research Data Australia, showcasing collections, parties and activities related to the Tropics.

Notably, Professor Steve Williams talked about the importance of the TDH data to his research and Professor Tom Burkot talked about the role the TDH has in the interface of his malaria research and policy based decisions.

Here are some links to the media coverage of the Tropical Data Hub Launch:

‘Silicon Valley’ of Oz: Townsville Bulletin, June 6th, 2012: http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/article/2012/06/06/336271_news.html



JCU media release, 5 June 2012: http://www-public.jcu.edu.au/news/JCU_103536

Monday 11 June 2012

Apps illustrated

Yesterday I was looking some data visualisations and thought I'd try to use one to illustrate what the Apps program is about....

.... So here's a wordle cloud that I think quite nicely shows this. It's based on the descriptions of the intended functions of the software that will be developed across all of the Apps projects:






Sunday 3 June 2012

First Apps project described in RDA

Congratulations to the team working on AP32 (the Human Proteome Browser), who now have discoverable descriptions for the software tool that is being developed and the input datasets that their tool is intended to act upon (neXtProt, PeptideAtlas, the GPM and the Human Protein Atlas), incorporated into Research Data Australia (RDA):




These RDA descriptions will allow the tool and datasets to be discovered by others around the world by using Google and other common search engines.

For the technically minded, the underlying conceptual RIF-CS modelling for this system (showing the service, data collection and party objects and the relationships between them) is shown here:





NOTE however, that the above information model includes some components that are not yet fully functional (such as the software system itself which is still under development), and it also describes some intended output collections that as yet, can't actually be created as the software tool required to make them is not yet functional.

Therefore, only a subset of these descriptions of the system components have currently been published in RDA. These point to tangible existing objects (or in the case of the software tool, a RIF-CS service description explaining its current 'non-functional' status):



The full complement of descriptions will be described in RDA when the fully functional software system is deployed towards the end of the project.

Apps Community Day #2

Last Wednesday, Melbourne put on its best late autumn drizzle for the 2nd of our Community Days for our remaining Apps project partners.

We'd like to thank the attendees for coming along to what we felt was another very valuable day of community building.

This time we had 16 attendees representing 10 projects, and once again there were excellent background talks presented by each project team (the recordings of which will be linked from our project list when we've finished editing them), and there was plenty of lively discussion on a number of topics of interest to the group which included:

  • How to leverage technology synergies between the projects, 
  • How to engage non-technical users of the software tools being developed, and 
  • How to collectively engage public sector data agencies (in each State) to make data available for research.








Wednesday 23 May 2012

How to create a good project acronym or tag


In the modern web it is very important that your project consider branding in the form of a unique acronym (or in web parlance, a 'tag' or 'keyword').  In fact, once you have decided on what the project is going to try and achieve (after the initial brainstorm), the next thing the project should do is decide on a clever acronym.  Coincidentally, this usually tends to be one of the more enjoyable aspects of the project as it utilises that puzzle part of your brain.  Just remember not to spend too much time trying to decide on which acronym, and once you do decide your acronym, remember that it CAN NOT CHANGE. Otherwise, see below for a quick couple of tests you can do below to check to see your acronym is a good one that will help your project be found on the Web.

Why should you create a project acronym / tag? 
Imagine you are half way through your project and giving a presentation at a conference. You come to the final slide and provide a link to your project page.  The people watching quickly try and scribble down the URL.  These same people go home and one day, several weeks later, they are reminded of your project and want to look it up, however they can't seem to find the URL that you provided.  The solution: a clever, memorable acronym (ideally with an accompanying image or icon) can make all the difference, as instead of a person having to remember a URL, they are able to just go to Google and type in the acronym / tag from memory and quickly find your project.  

HOW DO I CREATE A GOOD 'PROJECT ACRONYM' AKA “UNIQUE TAG” – STEP BY STEP
So you probably know what a tag is but what is a “unique” tag? Below you’ll find a quick guide on how to create a unique tag, or at least a unique-ish tag:
  • (1) Come up with some ideas for a tag. Usually people try and come up with a clever acronym based on their projects description.  Some requirements for a unique tag:
§  Your tag should be 6-12 characters in length and contain only letters (A-Z) and numbers (0-9), e.g. “fedorazon”
§  The tag should be a single “word”, no spaces should be in the tag.  Though you are welcome to compound words into a single word, e.g. “crm4uni”
§  No special characters should be included in the tag, i.e. no dashes (-), underscores (_), full stops / periods (.), commas (,) or any other character you’d have to press in combination with the “shift” key on your keyboard to create.  Just stick with single “word” combinations of A-Z and 0-9.
  • (2) Once you have some ideas for a tag, check your tag by going to Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines and typing it in.  If no more than a hundred or so pages come up with that combination of letters and numbers you most likely have a good unique-ish tag.  
    • Please note:  To have zero hits back from a search engine is obviously a truly unique tag, though we recognise this is not easy to achieve.  Ideally you want a tag that is unique but also human readable, so make sure it is easy to say out loud, as in “My project is “Shuffl” spelled with two “F’s” just look it up on Google you’ll find it”.
  • (3) Make sure the world knows what your tag means. Provide a page on the web with a matching URL describing what the tag means, for example ANDS uses the tag #andsApps to tag anything related to the programme of work relates to those collection of project. 
    •  Also, make sure your ANDS-Liaison is aware of your tag. Why? – because ANDS will look to archive your project and collect all the info about your project (including Web content, emails and reports).  
    • A unique tag makes the initial archive collection process much easier for us (as well as you and other organisation like the Internet Archive who will preserve your blog in the long term).
  • (4) Once you have a tag, use it everywhere (see ideas below) – not only because it will make it easier to find stuff but because it will help increase your search engine optimation aka “GoogleJuice”.  Though for that to happen you must make sure to pass your tag out so people will click on it lots (perhaps get some business cards with the tag on it)!
§  Use your tag on Web 2 Tools like: Wordpress, Blogger, Flickr, Twitter (via hash symbol “#”, Technorati and (last but not least) delicious.
§  Use your tag with your code repository like: GoogleCode, GitHub, Sourceforge, Bitbucket, etc.
§  Use your tag on word documents (2007/10) when you save the document there are boxes for both ‘author’ and ‘tags’ prior to clicking ’save’
§  Use your tag in the subject heading of all emails to your ANDS-Liase, this is especially helpful so your programme manager can keep track of correspodance with the various project participants.
  • (5) ONCE YOU HAVE DECIDED ON A TAG DON’T CHANGE IT. This is essential as if you change your tag half way through your project then you will lose all of the aggregation the benefits stated above.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ)
·          
§  Q: When should I create a tag? 
§  A: Ideally you should create a tag during bid writing stage (or even earlier if you are building on an idea <- never hurts to tag up an idea at a Eureka moment for your own notes).  
§  Most importantly for a project you should make sure that everyone knows the tag and agrees that it is a single unique tag.  The team should be refering to the project via that tag prior to the bid being submitted and should not change once the bid is funded.
§  Q: Won’t this tag get lost as more tags are added to the internet?
§  A: Potentially yes, but ideally we will have archived your content into our archive before that happens so that the data will be a coherent collection that others will be able to use in the future.
§  Q: Why is a tag for every project important to ANDS? 
§  A: By all projects having a tag we are able to start doing more quantitative analysis of data, for example text mining on various collections of projects.  If we fund several technical projects we can text mine the data produced by those projects to get an idea of what technologies are being regularly used or what is cutting edge.  This helps inform us on what kind of training events we should be putting on or what new innovation spaces we should be exploring.
§  Q: In twitter I use the hash or pound symbol (#) to tag tweets - do I always have to use the “#” symbol with my tag?  
§  A: No you do not need to use the hash symbol for other tagging tools.  For Twitter it is a good idea as it also enables you to set up a twitter archive (see Google) where you can then have your tweets saved beyond the two weeks that twitter keeps tweets!
§  Q: What if the online Web application I am using doesn’t have a tagging system, how can I tag content? 
§  A: You can set up a delicious account which enables you to tag any page with a URL of it’s own.
§  Q: What if I am confused and don’t understand tags? 
§   A: Contact your ANDS liaison who is just a phone call away 
§  Q [1] = A tag is basically a keyword you assign to help classify the information you create on the Web.  This article helps somewhat, though we use a more lossy definition of tags, see Q&A above: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_(metadata)

Tuesday 22 May 2012

How to appropriately acknowledge ANDS funding


We encourage you to talk / publish about your ANDS funded Apps project wherever possible, e.g. by delivering seminars about your project, producing on-line or printed materials such as newsletters, publishing Web pages, etc. 

However, when you do this, we ask you to do two things:

  • Please acknowledge ANDS and ANDS/DIISRTE funding as described in the guidelines that are found on the ANDS website. This also applies to your project blog! So, if you have such a blog, please make sure you acknowledge ANDS and ANDS funding as described above on every page.
  • Please let your ANDS contact know and give us a link to (or a copy of) the publication, seminar, etc.

Key Apps Deliverable #4 – Demonstrations of Value


Good news stories about the software and how it is adding value by helping researchers to do cutting edge research that wasn’t easy or even possible to do before, are a key deliverable in all the ANDS Apps projects, and a great topic to blog about.

These “Demonstrations of Value” are expected to:
  • result in data being transformed or integrated across multiple sources to produce new forms of information that enable innovative, high-quality research outcomes;
  • deliver value to at least one high profile research champion;
  • be relevant to a range of government portfolios; and
  • engage with National Research Capabilities.
The “value message” (i.e. WHAT value has the software added to the research process?) and an outline of the envisaged strategy for communicating of the value message to a wider audience (i.e. WHO? will present the message, through WHAT? media channels and WHEN?, will have been defined in each ANDS Applications Project Description prior to contract signing. These Deliverables will always require a high profile Researcher or Policy Maker to publicly state that the software product is allowing them to conduct research / develop policy that wasn’t possible before.

Blogging about the dissemination activities by the high-profile Research or Policy Champion themselves is perfect blog content, however any other stories about the project and interest in the product by other groups within Australia and Internationally are also excellent material for your blog. In particular, we also would love to hear about demonstrations of value and other “good news stories” that were not envisaged in the project contract - ANDS and DIISRTE are very interested in hearing that their investment is having a widespread impact.


TAGS for these types of post: EITHER andsContractedDoVs OR  andsOtherDoVs, andsValue, andsApps, fundedByAustralianNationalDataService, DIISRTE, {your project's acronym or tag}, {your ands project code, e.g. AP67}, {any other keyword tags you can think of that will help your project be discovered by like-minded projects}.

Key Apps Deliverable #3 – A Software Requirements Specification


For all ANDS funded software development projects, we require a Software Requirements Specification (SRS) near the beginning of project. There are two options:

OPTION 1:
Complete a non-public, paper document based on a traditional SRS developed by the IEEE (NOTE: Do not use this pdf document - ask your ANDS contact for the template in Microsoft Word format if you are interested in this option).

OPTION 2:
Include the same information that is found in a traditional SRS, in your own Project Blog. This way, researchers and other development teams around the world will be able to discover what great work your team is doing.


If you decide to go down the Project Blog path, there are a few basic requirements on your Blog:
We also highly encourage the use of a web analytics engine so you can monitor the readership of your Blog.

Once you have set up this blog, ANDS requires the following 6 posts (including the listed tags) which will replace the traditional SRS.  A very nice early example from the Apps projects is the  blog from the Bird Species Distribution Records project (Edgar) from JCU. Links to the relevant posts from Edgar are shown below:

·         Post 1. "PRODUCT TEAM": Example from the Bird Species Distribution Records project, Edgar (AP03).
- Who are the people on the team and what skills/tools are they going to use during the course of the project to produce your primary product?
- A team picture and/or individual pictures with bios as per each role in the team is highly encouraged.
- This is also a good place to state the licensing you will be using for the content of the blog (e.g. Creative-Commons-Attribution) - please remember to use a link to the license and the correct CC logo.
TAGS for this post: andsApps, andsProjectTeam, andsSkills, fundedByAustralianNationalDataService, DIISRTE, {your project's acronym or tag}, {your ands project code, e.g. AP67}, {any other keyword tags you can think of that will help your project be discovered by like-minded projects}.


·         Post 2. "PROJECT DESCRIPTION" and/or "CASE FOR ACTION": Example from the Edgar Project
Please provide a short (one or two sentence) description about why you are doing this project, why it matters and to whom.  Also if you have the project aims and objectives to hand or any other simple outlines for what the project is doing, this would be the place to put it (though keep it simple and perhaps add a diagram so your readers stay interested).
TAGS for this post: andsProjectDescription, andsContext, andsAims, andsObjectives, andsApps, fundedByAustralianNationalDataService, DIISRTE, {your project's acronym or tag}, {your ands project code, e.g. AP67}, {any other keyword tags you can think of that will help your project be discovered by like-minded projects}.


·         Post 3. "TARGET CUSTOMERS and/or "HOW THE PRODUCT WILL MEET OUR USERS NEEDS", i.e. problems, solutions and benefits.  Example from the Edgar Project
Some questions to consider as you write this post:
- Who are your customers (both leading edge and typical)?
- What benefits will this product provide to each of those customers?
- What problems do your customers have and how will this product solve them?
- We would request that specific customers be named including their expected participation in the project (the customer should not be someone internal to the team).
TAGS for this post: andsCustomers, andsOwners, andsApps, fundedByAustralianNationalDataService, DIISRTE, {your project's acronym or tag}, {your ands project code, e.g. AP67}, {any other keyword tags you can think of that will help your project be discovered by like-minded projects}.


·         Post 4. "KEY FACTORS CUSTOMERS WILL USE TO JUDGE THE VALUE OF OUR PRODUCT", i.e. how do you independently measure success?  Example from the Edgar Project
Some questions to ask while writing this post:
- What parts of the product are the most important to customers and their perception of its value to what they want to do with it?
- How efficient is the product compared to how the customer originally did the task the system is replacing?
- How is your product better than what already exists out on the Web or are you just repeating what already exists?
- Is the product perceived as high quality and reliable by the customer?
- How do you enable your customers to independently review the product (how does the project manager or other team members try and influence the customer, is this reflected upon)?

TAGS for this post: andsQuality, andsValue, andsAssessment, andsCustomers, andsApps, fundedByAustralianNationalDataService, DIISRTE, {your project's acronym or tag}, {your ands project code, e.g. AP67}, {any other keyword tags you can think of that will help your project be discovered by like-minded projects}.

·         Post 5. TITLE: "KEY TECHNOLOGIES & KEY FEATURES".  Example from the Edgar Project
Please provide a list of the full stack of technology being used, including links to specific versions of the technology with full descriptions (feel free to use wikipedia links), e.g. networking protocols, operating systems, programming language and libraries, development tools and environments, frameworks, paradigms, methodologies, testing methods and usability tools, etc.  Based on this list, provide context for the technologies being used including:
a.) What is the most important part of technology being used?
b.) What will require the most development effort and why?
c.) What features are the most important to gain customer satisfaction and buy-in?
d.) Non-functional requirements.
e.) A high-level architectural diagram.


We also require you to provide a link to the source code repository (see our blog post entitled “KeyApps Deliverable #2 – Setting up a Product Code Repository) i.e. version control system, and that an open source license is chosen prior to starting the development - http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ ← we encourage use of branching/forking repositories such as Mercurial or Git on code.google or GitHub itself.  Please contact ANDS for guidance if you are using an internal SVN that isn't open to the public as this goes against the open source ethos we encourage projects to adopt. Although of course there are circumstances for keeping the code internal at first, we just need to have a discussion to make sure we understand how the code will be eventually opened up.
TAGS for this post: andsFeatures, andsFunctions, andsTechnology, andsArchitecture, andsTools, andsApps, fundedByAustralianNationalDataService, DIISRTE, {your project's acronym or tag}, {your ands project code, e.g. AP67}, {any other keyword tags you can think of that will help your project be discovered by like-minded projects}.

·         Post 6. TITLE: "PROJECT OUTPUTS & OUR PRIMARY PRODUCT".  Example from the Edgar Project
- What are the outputs that will be delivered and how will it be expressed so the outside world will understand what has been produced and what is reusable?
- What supporting documentation will be provided with each of the products so it can be reused?
- Will there be a dissemination event or training that will be rolled out alongside the product to help new customers to use it?
- Of all our outputs which product will be the most likely to be reused by other institutions?

TAGS for this post: andsOutputs, andsProduct, andsApps, fundedByAustralianNationalDataService, DIISRTE, {your project's acronym or tag}, {your ands project code, e.g. AP67}, {any other keyword tags you can think of that will help your project be discovered by like-minded projects}.

Please make sure to provide an ATOM / RSS feed so we and others can easily find these posts on the web.  Also please don't forget to add the ANDS logo and 'funder' statement with regards to DIISRTE support on each page, as described here.

Once you have published these six blog posts please let your ANDS contact know, as the ANDS technical review group will read over the posts and provide feedback, ideas and thoughts about other projects with similar technical requirements.

Once your SRS deliverable has been signed off, please continue blogging on a regular basis – it is a great advertiser for your project!

ANDS Applications Project Blogs/Sites