Thursday, October 28, 2010

The creation process of an European project deliverable...

Today I had to focus all my energy into a document that despite being quite simple it is a pain to do. Which reminded me of doing a point by point list of the process of creation such types of documents...

The first step is to get the template for documents, European project are very paper driven and there are always templates, that is how the administrative people remain happy and feel useful ;P
Don't get me wrong they are useful, in fact all the paper trail is required by the commission so there we are for the first step...

Second step read the DoW, which is the cool term for Description of Work, of course don't read the whole thing, read the description for the deliverable in question, as well as possible description of interlinking components...

Third step, read all related prior deliverables and start making notes to refer to then on the new one. Some repetition is expected, since reviewers are not always aware of prior documents, in fact most of the times if they were aware it as long slipped their mind...

Fourth step, define the bullet points structure for your document, highlighting its objectives...

Fifth step, perform the state of the art review, this is only valid for academic partners, in the case of industrial partners just write whatever you see fit no one is going to tell you otherwise :P as for the academic, well state of the art review of the domain is expect, it is like we are suppose to be able to spit out a state of the art review as quickly as the industrialists do their descriptions. The funny thing is we can :P and if you can't you need to master the academic arts a bit better :P

Seven step identify the work you have to perform

Eight step minimise the work you have to perform to the needs of the industrial partners while emphasizing how much you are doing :P

Ninth step do the work. Strangely enough by this stage there should be 3 or 4 deliverables documents already submitted, with topics containing words like "preliminary", "base", "requirements", "architecture", "framework", etc :P

Tenth step, fill in the gaps of the document with the work emphasizing its academic side, so it is easier to turn into a paper :P

hope you enjoy this description on the inner workings of an academic view of European project deliverables :P

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