Tag Archives: eln

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”
Posted in Industry, Project Management, RFPs | Also tagged , | Leave a comment

What gets kept in Informatics Systems, and where?

By Simon Coles | Published: May 30, 2009
This entry is part of a series, ELNs and the Credit Crunch» Not all of the “Stuff” sloshing around the lab is the same, and distinguishing between them helps tease out the best place to store things. We use a simple Triangle Diagram (originally proposed by John Trigg of PhaseFour which really just tries [...]
Posted in Architecture, Industry, Preservation, Project Management, Records Management | Also tagged , , | Leave a comment

Breaking down ELN functionality

By Simon Coles | Published: May 30, 2009
This entry is part of a series, ELNs and the Credit Crunch» Most R&D organisations have more than one scientific discipline under their aegis. These groups will have developed their own suites of IT tools to help them do their work, everything from common desktop infrastructure to instruments and specialist tools. Some of these [...]
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How can we do ELNs safely?

By Simon Coles | Published: May 30, 2009
This entry is part of a series, ELNs and the Credit Crunch» If the traditional large-ELN model no longer fits, what options are there for organisations who still need to find a better replacement for the Paper Lab Notebook? Fortunately, there are a number of concepts which have grown out of ELN deployments outside [...]
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ELN 2.0 Vs ELN 1.0, in the new world

By Simon Coles | Published: May 30, 2009
This entry is part of a series, ELNs and the Credit Crunch» The problem with the term “ELN” One of the problems that has confronted the “Electronic Lab Notebook” industry for a long time is the ambiguity of the term. Many a consultant and vendor has attempted to hijack the term with their own favored [...]
Posted in Industry, Project Management | Tagged | 1 Comment
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