[Bioclusters] Re: [BiO BB] Bioinformatics (potential) needs assessment form?

[Chris Dwan]

>  A real needs assessment tends to be an interview.  You might be able 
> to do a set of interviews to get a better understanding of  what 
> questions to put into your poll.

Agreed.   Though I'm certain that some of the lurkers on this list 
started to salivate at the thought of a pre-written set of product 
specifications...prepared by their potential customers.  :)

I think that a lot of us have seen specifications ranging from the easy 
(we only run this one application, for which we have the source code, 
and we need to maximize simulations per hour per dollar) all the way 
through the astonishingly huge:  (provide basic email, networking, and 
printing services, plus develop custom web services interfaces to 
databases that we will deploy).

I generally start with questions about what sort of biological data 
they work with:  genomic sequence, transcript profiling, protein (and 
RNA too) interactions, more complex systems biology, and so on.  
Starting with the number of terabytes the group needs can sometimes 
miss important details.

Good luck.  I'll be interested to see what comes of your effort!

-Chris Dwan
  The BioTeam