In a nut shell, my 4-month project will be to take a computer simulation of a complex biological system developed by the PhD student and ammend to provide additional functionality. This new functionality will be utilised to experiment in silico with a view to hypothesis generation for actual in vivo experiments. These wet-lab experiments will be performed by scientists who are collaborating with the wider project team.
I was at the PhD student's disposal for the whole day and became bombarded with as much information and knowledge as time (and coffee) permitted. Having studied Biochemistry for my first degree many years ago, I am absolutely amazed at the level of biological system knowledge the PhD student (in Computer Science) has gained throughout the past 2.5 years of his research.
Once we had effectively performed a 'brain dump', I was left with a list of key journal papers to digest. This was with a view to gaining the necessary domain knowledge which would facilitate progression to requirements gathering and analysis.
An initial high-level plan was created using a number of generic phases from IT Project Management - Initiation, Elaboration, Implementation, Testing and Deployment. The plan provided 1 month to gain a firm understanding of the domain (subject matter) and familiarise myself with the new programming languages (Java, Ruby and Matlab) and tools (e.g. Eclipse IDE); 2 months to develop the custom code, unit test, system test, and user acceptance test; and 1 month to write up the project report - 8,000 words in the format of an extended academic paper.
Two observations immediately spring to mind: 1) there is virtually no slack in this plan, therefore any slippage will incur reduction in scope or quality; and 2) rolling-wave planning will be performed where the low-level activities are planned and introduced into the schedule incrementally throughout the project.
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