These are tasks that all projects should complete during the first semester (DS 6011). The order may vary, and not all projects will proceed at the same rate.
- Hold kick-off meeting with client to define aim and scope of project, location of data, and communication plan.Should take place sometime during the first week
- Set up online resources for team collaboration and sharing files, code, data, and tasks.
- Refine and finalize aim and project scope and share document with client.
- Identify and review salient literature and prior art in problem space.
- Set up compute and data storage resources, e.g., with Rivanna or AWS.
- Draft a budget if necessary.
- Establish the data—acquire, store, and share; include data dictionaries, etc. if available. Know the scale and variety of the data, e.g., number of features and observations, data types for features, file sizes, etc.
- Explore the data. Discover gaps, imbalances, outliers, etc.
- Operationalize project aim and define a general approach and share with client.
- Anticipate methods and models to extract value from the data.Determine if data can be used to aim of project. Revise aim and scope if necessary.