Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and give direct feedback. Using this approach the projects felt an
integral part of the development and responded well to being the testers
of the code. After ten weeks a further two projects were added to
Design Tracker, resulting in four projects entering data and tracking their
design hypotheses and compounds through the DMTA cycle. One of
these projects was being run at another site, which allowed us to gain
feedback and enhancement requests from a remote location before
we released version 1.0 across multiple sites. In the two months before
releasing to the wider community we again released on a two week
schedule.
After essentially 16 weeks of beta release testing and enhancements
we released version 1.0. This release included documentation and
training materials - essentially tutorials for designers and synthetic
chemists. Training and support are now carried out by the development
team and the super user network [15]. The super user network is
sponsored by the PCN (Predictive Chemistry Network) and is
represented on each R&D site, unlike the development team. At this
stage we did not formally announce the release but allowed Design
Tracker to grow by word of mouth. We ran formal training sessions
for on-site users in designated training rooms. This involved users
going through a series of scenarios on a training version of Design
Tracker so users could add, delete and update without fear of corrupting
any production data.
Other R&D sites began to request access more regularly so a similar
approach was adopted to start with a single project on that site, give
demonstrations of the software to a limited group of people, encourage
use by responding to their requests for training and minor enhancements
promptly and develop relationships with a few key users on each site.
The way the different chemistry disciplines were starting to interact with
each other gave us the idea to develop the collaborative aspects of the
software including commenting (akin to blogs) and voting systems.
Design Tracker was starting to become a social network for collaborative
drug design.
Throughout 2009 we released regular updates to the software and by
the end of 2009 there were a large number of projects and registered
users, as shown in Figure 12.4. At this stage at some research areas and
sites all projects were using Design Tracker. It was at this point that a
standard operating procedure was agreed by both the designers, synthetic
chemists and project teams to give a clearer understanding of each other's
roles and responsibilities. An example of this is that the designers
have agreed not to add more compounds once they have moved a
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