The document discusses reasons why research projects fail and introduces an approach called Scrum to help address those failures. Scrum is a set of guidelines for organizing work into sprints of 2-4 weeks, with planning meetings at the start of each sprint to define objectives, daily stand-up meetings to track progress, and retrospective meetings after each sprint to improve. By breaking work into short sprints with frequent re-planning, Scrum aims to help research objectives stay clear and prevent wasted time as objectives change over the course of a project.

1. Agile Bioinformatics

2. Why do research projects fail?

3. Why do research projects fail?
(in programming)
● Time wasted using wrong tools / cleaning bad
data / etc..
● Insufficient programming skills
● Objectives not defined clearly / bad planning

4. Why do research projects fail?
(in programming)
● Time wasted using wrong tools / cleaning bad
data / etc.. ask for help
● Insufficient programming skills practice
● Objectives not defined clearly / bad planning

5. Why do research projects fail?
(in programming)
● Time wasted using wrong tools / cleaning bad
data / etc.. ask for help
● Insufficient programming skills practice
● Objectives not defined clearly / bad
planning

6. Example: last year's students
project
● Day 1: Let's do a project to analyze a dataset
of Alternative Splicing expression

7. Example: last year's students
project
● Day 1: Let's do a project to analyze a dataset
of Alternative Splicing expression
● Day 3: Working on five different projects at
once

8. Example: PhD thesis
● Day 1: professor explains great idea of PhD
thesis

9. Example: PhD thesis
● Day 1: professor explains great idea of PhD
thesis
● After 3 years: student working on a completely
different project

10. Planning and Programming
● Planning is the most important part in
programming
● If your objective are not clear, you'll waste time

11. Planning is difficult,
because objectives change!
● Objectives always change over time
– New priorities
– New ideas
– Somebody else published it
– etc..

12. Planning is difficult,
because objectives change!
● Objectives always change over time
– New priorities
– New ideas
– Somebody else published it
– Etc..
● What's the solution?

13. Scrum
● Scrum is an approach to software
programming

14. Scrum
● Scrum is an approach to software
programming
● It's a set of guidelines to how to organize your
work:
– How to define the objectives?
– How frequently objectives must be re-stated?
– How to organize daily work?

15. Scrum
● Scrum is an approach to software
programming
● It's a set of guidelines to how to organize your
work:
– How to define the objectives?
– How frequently objectives must be re-stated?
– How to organize daily work?
● Guidelines, not rules

16. The scrum “sprint”
● The basic of scrum is to split the work into
“sprints” of 2-4 weeks each

17. The scrum “sprint”
● The basic of scrum is to split the work into
“sprints” of 2-4 weeks each
– Every 2-4 weeks, a meeting to redefine the
objectives, and plan how to obtain them
– Short daily meetings to check that everything is ok
– A feedback meeting at the end, to discuss what
went well or not

18. The planning meeting
● A planning meeting is made every 2-3 weeks
(beginning of the “sprint”)
● Tasks:
– Define main objectives
– Divide work into single tasks

19. The planning meeting
● A planning meeting is made every 2-3 weeks
(beginning of the “sprint”)
● Tasks:
– Define main objectives
– Divide work into single tasks
http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/kolbis/

20. Planning table (post-its)
Source of the image: wikipedia

21. The “post-it” rule
● Ideally, a task can be
decribed in paper of
the size of a “Post-it”
● If you can't explain it
in a Post-it, then split
it into two tasks

22. Objectives table
(sorry – I'll put this online when I submitted the paper)

23. Daily meeting
● 15 minutes meetings, every day in the
morning
● Each participant explains:
– What have you accomplished yesterday?
– What are you going to do today?
– Are there any impediments / stumbling blocks?

24. Daily planning table
(sorry – I'll put this online when I submitted the paper)

25. Daily Meeting example
Barcelona runroom http://www.runroom.com/

26. Daily Meeting example
Barcelona runroom http://www.runroom.com/

27. Daily meetings must be short!
● The daily meeting must be necessarily not
longer than 15 minutes
● Anything that requires more than 15 minutes,
should be discussed later

28. Never work more than 8 hours!
● The day should be planned for 8 hours of work
● If you consistently work more than 8 hours
each day, you are not planning yourself well

29. Retrospective Meeting
● At the end of each sprint (2-3 weeks)
– What has been accomplished?
– What has gone wrong?
– What can be improved?

30. Retrospective table
Image source:
www.it-zynergy.com

31. Retrospective Meeting
● At the end of each sprint (2-3 weeks)
– What has been accomplished?
– What has gone wrong?
– What can be improved?
● Tip: take a few days of “rest” after a sprint

32. Scrum - resume
● Split your work into “sprints”, defining
objectives that can be completed in 2-3 weeks
– One planning meeting at the beginning
– 15 minutes meetings every day
– Feedback meeting at the end

33. Scrum - resume
● Split your work into “sprints”, defining
objectives that can be completed in 2-3 weeks
– One planning meeting at the beginning
– 15 minutes meetings every day
– Feedback meeting at the end
● These are guidelines, not rules

34. Example scrum calendar
Image source: http://rocketninesolutions.com

35. How to know more?
● Agile Barcelona
– http://agile-barcelona.org/
● Barcelona gamestorming grou
– http://www.meetup.com/gamestorming-barcelona/
● Look for the “Agile Programming” group in
your city
● Kane D, “Introducing Agile Development in
Bioinformatics”, 2003