We are working on our preliminary design proposal for our senior project. In one section we have to make an assessment of our major sources of risk: what can go wrong and what we can do about it. We decide that our main source of risk, apart from human error (because we know ourselves), is the whole entire research facility that is running the Hamster project.
Hey, we're free labor. It's not like they can fire us for bringing up the blatantly obvious.
Case in point: The weather station we're supposed to be adding to the Hamsters
The portions of our design proposal relating to the weather station consist entirely of question marks. We got a glimpse of the weather station a couple weeks ago, but we don't have it in hand, nor do we have any technical information. We've been asking about it for some time.
Today we ask Dr. Smith about it again when he drops into the lab to discuss one of the New! Surprising! additions to the project. As he'd been expecting to receive the technical specs from Dr. Science this morning, he goes back to his office to check his email.
Five minutes later he returns, looking stunned and carrying a sheet of paper. "This is all he sent. Maybe you'd better email him with…specific questions."
I take the sheet of paper and see that it's basically a research summary, a few paragraphs describing the weather station, with all the technical content of a press release. "I don't think we know enough about it to ask specific questions." I think up some later and email Dr. Science, but I doubt I'll have any more luck than Dr. Smith did.
How much do you want to bet we never get it? Or that they haven't even put it together? What they showed us was a circuit board and a few loose sensors. I'd say not having the central component of the project is our greatest source of risk, except that it seems to have gone beyond risk and into certainty.
344 words | January 21, 2005 10:28 PM | Ivory tower