Problem statements

outline.md

Defining and Defending Project Scope

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This is one of the most critical things!

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• Problem Statement(s)
• Formal documentation of Project Scope
• Project Charter
• Formal Requirements (Highly detailed)
• Architecture / Design Documentation
• Software Development / Testing Plan
• Code

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• Problem Statement:
  • Outcome:
    • What does the world look like if problem solved?
  • Issue statement:
    • Describe the problem using specific issues.
    • Not a "lack of solution" statement
  • Method:
    • What approach / process will be followed to address issues and solve problem?

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• Project Charter
  • Vision / Objectives / Outcomes
  • Scope Statement
  • General statement of Technical Approach
  • High-level requirements
  • Rough estimate of timeframe and resources
  • Acceptance criteria (as measured by...)
  • Decision / Change Management Process

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statement.md

• Example Problem Statement:
  • Outcome:
    • Non-modellers will have access to a stable, scalable, well-documented system to enabling them to identify, explore, visualize, and efficiently perform flexible computational transformations on model outputs, satellite datasets, and whatever other data they may choose to provide.
  • Issue statement:
    • Model outputs are currently stored on private servers, and are too large to easily move around or work with locally
    • Other public datasets (e.g. Satellite) are scattered across many locations and are also very large
    • All of these datasets are in formats unfamiliar to many researchers, and require specialized and/or custom tooling to manipulate.
    • The computational environment required to efficiently and reproducibly process data of this type is not typically available locally, and requires expertise to configure and deploy on leased infrastructure.
    • Building a bespoke system to address these issues is likely to be prohibitively expensive and risky to build and maintain, underfeatured relative to more mature commercial solutions and too late to satisfy the near-term need.
  • Method:
    • Obtain access to model outputs on private servers, and automate exfiltration as it updates
    • Create / integrate tools to transform raster / grid model output to standard GeoTIFF format
    • Automate Upload of updated GeoTIFF outputs to Google Earth Engine (GEE)
    • Promote / Educate community about GEE resources. Provide training, events, etc. to bootstrap interested community
    • Collect feedback on usefulness of approach, gaps in functionality, "pain points", etc.
    • Iterate to provide more features, document standard workflows providing sample code, etc.
    • Formulate and communicate feedback/feature requests to GEE team for future improvements