Category Archives: Industry

Electronic Lab Notebook Requirements – possible pitfalls

By Simon Coles | Published: March 2, 2010
Project teams have been drawing up lists of requirements since the dawn of time, and since that first list the fate of a project has to a great extent been sealed the moment the requirements have been finalized. I wrote this article by accident but I thought it was worth blogging as it explores the specific problems with requirements gathering and RFPs in the ELN industry and suggests some probably unrealistically hopeful solutions. Wouldn't it be delightful if RFPs contained a final sections with questions such as:
  • “If you could remove 5 of our requirements what would they be and why?”
  • “What are the most expensive/troublesome requirements listed above?”
  • “Which of these requirements do you think we don’t really need, based on your experience of similar projects?”
  • “What are we missing?”
  • “If you were us, what are the three things you would be most worried about going forward?”
  • “Please rate our chance of success if we go with you, and if we go with another vendor, with reasons”
Also posted in Project Management, RFPs | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The speed of human progress

By Simon Coles | Published: February 22, 2010
Fascinating factoid from this post on Alertbox about the improvements in usabilty over the years: Human progress happens at 4% per year, averaged across many fields, ranging from 2% to 7% How interesting! I wonder what the state of play is for ELNs…. I suspect we’d like to think it’s something like 10% or 20%, but I [...]
Also posted in ELN Design | Leave a comment

Electronic Laboratory Notebook Group on LinkedIn

By Simon Coles | Published: February 3, 2010
My experience on the Internet to date has led me to prefer open, blog-based mechanisms for an Industry “Conversation” rather than the closed world of LinkedIn groups or indeed any other forum format. Each participant has their own platform and their interests/biases are plain to see and the readers can make their own informed judgements. [...]
Also posted in Happenings | 5 Comments

Presentation: Survey of the ELN Landscape

By Simon Coles | Published: January 27, 2010
Here’s my presentation on “Surveying the ELN Landscape” from the SMI ELN Conference in London today. Bullet points: Business drivers Comparing the different sectors and disciplines Build or buy? An overview of the solution space Patterns of success There’s a few concepts in here which deserve their own posts (presentations are so useful for stimulating the creative juices!) which hopefully I [...]
Also posted in ELN Design, Project Management, Recent Conferences | 1 Comment

“Chairman’s Opening Remarks” from SMI ELN Conference in London

By Simon Coles | Published: January 27, 2010
I’m chairing the first day of the SMI ELN Conference in London today. Which truth be told isn’t something I enjoy but hopefully I can add something. Anyway, you have to give a 10 minute presentation talking about wider industry issues and I thought it was appropriate to draw people’s attention to what’s happening in the [...]
Also posted in Architecture, ELN Design, Recent Conferences | 1 Comment
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