Harvester Webinar

The Harvester team delivered a webinar entitled “How to Use the VIVO Harvester” on May 2, 2011. The webinar was recorded and is available on-line here http://sourceforge.net/projects/vivo/files/VIVO%20Harvester/Demonstration/
The webinar is a good start for familiarizing those working on data ingest with the various Harvester components.

Implementation and New Implementations

I had an opportunity to attend the national implementation call this past week. There are two large questions that I believe we should consider as we head for a community-support model for VIVO. 1) How do we engage the many sites that are implementing VIVO beyond the NIH seven? In particular, how do we involve them in the calls, engage them in developing materials, assist them with their implementations, learn and share expertise? 2) How do we move from implementation to operations? I have asked the group for recommendations regarding these transitions and we’ll ideas regarding these issues here.

Implementing VIVO is a project – for most of our sites their project has been complex. The VIVO software has undergone significant change since September of 2009. And as we described in the original proposal, we were not tasked with implementing VIVO once, but rather several times as the software developed.

In the beginning we were lacking significant ingest tools and significant instructions on how to install VIVO, what data to ingest, how to create a project, elements of the project and how to end the project and transition to operations.

As VIVO adds sites, we add new knowledge – of project management, of enterprise software and of transition to operations. Colorado, Nebraska, the USDA and the NIH all have significant VIVO projects managed by people with experience in large scale system deployment. They are bringing expertise and experience. They are committed to making things work and willing to help in the development of the VIVO community. Please welcome them, listen carefully and be prepared to share and collaborate.

We are in the process of rewriting our implementation materials. Implementation focuses on the creation of a new VIVO system, complete with data. We will emphasize the nature of the project – planning, execution and closeout – in our materials regarding implementation.

The Transition from Implementation to Operations

Implementation is a project. Projects have a scope, defined goals, expected outcomes, resource allocations, and timelines. Operations is the on-going ownership of the capabilities constructed by the implementation project. In some cases, the group implementing VIVO and the group operating VIVO will be the same. In other cases, an outside group may implement VIVO, or a designated project team may implement VIVO. Ownership of VIVO following implementation should be determined before implementation begins.

An overview of the nature of the work and the transition from implementation to operation is shown below.

Every institution is different, but the work areas are now quite well known and relatively distinct. The technical effort requires skilled personnel. Data curation requires technical skills, a sound appreciation for data sources and VIVO data representation, and a strong commitment to quality.

We will develop these ideas further in our new implementation materials, emphasizing the nature of implementation as a project, and operations as what follows the completion of implementation.

Thomson-Reuters

We have had another good round of conversations with Thomson-Reuters. We will have progress reports as the discussions progress.

Ideas for VIVO Notes?

Is there an idea that you would like to see developed in VIVO Notes? Do you have questions or concerns that might best be presented here? Please drop me a note.

Mike Conlon 01:46, 16 May 2011 (UTC)