Things youre doing well

1
Things youre doing well

• Overall, the results of project are very
  impressive, especially at the half-way point
• Scope of project is impressive there is
  effective leveraging
• Good outreach to Fusion community interest is
  building
• Grid-based TRANSP transition to be THE production
  service is a tremendous success a real impact!
• Many interesting technologies are being developed
• Clear evidence that fusion researchers are
  actively involved in providing feedback
• Driving policy-based management
• Thank you for being balanced in your choice of
  grid technologies
• TRANSP, Akenti, and Globus is a pragmatic
  combination of technologies which exist and work
• Driving the Access Grid to more accessiblity
  (PIG/laptop) is good
• Team is committed
• Thanks for the good response to our questions
• Leadership role in the real-time remote
  participation

2
Concerns

• Subgroups are quite independent - clouding the
  external view of NFC as a coherent whole, a
  community direction, a vision for the future of
  fusion
• Project appears to be spread too thin--scope
  appears larger than budget
• Some of the goals in terms of level of
  functionality required (how easy to use? how much
  faster?) appear to be nebulous, leading to
  inabilities to prioritize efforts
• Planning lacks a sufficiently clear set of
  milestones, deliverables and accountability.
  Iterative development is a reasonable model for
  the project, but this still requires
  prioritization decisions, milestones, etc.
• Balance between ease of use and adding new
  capabilities

3
Recommendations

• Prepare a coherent, effective marketing approach
  for your growing user base
• Write a short externally-focused
  vision/architecture document that implicitly
  answers many of the questions raised in this
  review (to the skeptic in and outside fusion)
• Communicate what users will have by when when
  will new codes come in, when will a control room
  test happen, what will it involve/not involve?)
• Use the technology (AG) to sell the technology
  (to advertise and do tutorials).
• Expand services part of the web page
• Provide a focused, effective way to communicate
  with potential new usersnow, not later
• There are opportunities to evolve MDSplus to use
  more standardized subcomponents and to expose it
  via standard protocols these should be explored
  to prepare for wider, long term, international
  adoption.
• Formalizing planning would be helpful it would
  be useful to look to other collaboratories/grids
  for best practices
• Focus on defining integration points, integration
  demonstrations
• Revisit your priorities and plans to assure
  maximum impact of the collaboratory mission
• Formalize focus on developing a long-term
  international vision and path for the Fusion
  Grid/Collaboratory
• Continue to be a driver for remote collaboration
  for ITER and for expanding collaborative research
  within the US fusion program
• Document the process you used to integrate TRANSP
  into the grid to provide a guide to others who
  would like to do a similar thing.