Announcement: Writing a new book in Data Science and R&D projects

About two years ago an idea was hovering through my mind, a question actually: Why is that “traditional” project managers fail so gloriously in managing teams, especially in the Research and Development (R&D) field of work? I let it mature for a while, thinking that someone will eventually write a book or something about it. Two years have passed and no one did it, so I figured, well, I guess I will have to do that myself. After sending the proposal to only few top publishers, I was privileged enough to land a book contract with Elsevier, which was indeed my first choice for this endeavor. 

The subject of the book will be simple: Managing and coordinating teams in the R&D environment, specifically in the domains of Data Analytics, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in general, where I have been working for more than two and a half decades as a professional. Specifically, it will focus on every aspect of teamwork from the first to the last day of a R&D project, including recruitment, roles, technical problems and solutions, managing risk, conflict resolution, iterations and feedback, expectation management, deadlines, priorities, planning for the future. 

I’ve had the privilege to work with exceptional scientists, colleagues and friends and throughout these years I have identified key characteristics of efficient teamwork in challenging situations. Efficient project management is far from enough for building successful teams for R&D. There is no magic recipe for success, but there are definitely some common lessons to be learned. 

Starting last week, the full writing of the first draft is now active. It took six weeks of preparation, material organization and time planning, and now the main work begins. This subject is a unique case of content and it needs special attention to detail and discipline. Instead of thinking what else can be included, it is more like deciding what I must leave out due to excessive length. The book is going to be in the order or 100k words or 220+ pages in the classic academic / textbook format and it will be published some time around next summer (2025). I have planned the writing of the first draft itself for a span of 22 weeks, i.e., it should be finished by the end of October if everything goes well. 

I will be posting updates about the progress of the work hopefully on a weekly basis. I would really love to hear about ideas, problems and solutions about these issues from people working in the same area of work (R&D). Keep checking the hashtag #DSbook 


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Hello x86: Low-level assembly coding for the 8086

Image
Hello x86: Low-level assembly coding for the 8086 wiring no-talking, in emulated 80286 / MS-DOS machine in DOSbox. This is a set of four "hello world" codes in x86 assembly, using single-segment 16-bit/i8086 instruction set. The purspose of this tutorial is to demonstrate how exact, minimal-space, yet razor-sharp is assembly coding, especially when dealing with such complexities like the segmented memory model of MS-DOS. The four versions are: Hello1.asm: Old-style standard directives, used by '70s-'80s assemblers, for .EXE output. Hello1C.asm: Old-style standard directives, used by '70s-'80s assemblers, for .COM output. Hello2.asm: Compact 'dot' directives, used by modern assemblers, for .EXE output. Hello2C.asm: Compact 'dot' directives, used by modern assemblers, for .COM output. The difference between .EXE and .COM comes from the MS-DOS era, when the first format required 'far' pointers (segment:offset) for memory ad
Read more

Fibonacci numbers in C (4 different ways)

Image
Fibonacci series in pure C no talking, using only vim and gcc in terminal, implementing four alternative designs: 1) Recursive: using the typical mathematical definition for Fib(n) 2) Iterative: using loop instead of recursion to avoid call stack overflows 3) Dynamic Programming: using buffer for cached results, calculated only once 4) Analytical: using the solution of the differential equation for Fib(n) Each option has its pros and cons, typically trading code simplicity for resources (recursion) or trading memory (cache) for speed. The purpose of this tutorial is to demonstrate coding discipline when working with very limited coding tools (command-line only in terminal) and alternative designs for use in different situations. Inline comments describe details about the code being written. Enable captions for more information on what is happening in each section of the video. Enable captions for more details and walk-through. Source code available at the Github repository (see chann
Read more

Multiplication tables in COBOL

Image
This program is a simple demonstration of basic user I/O and arithmetic operations in one of the earliest versions of COBOL that was made available for home computers in the early '80s. The "executable" was actually an intermediate binary format created as the compiler output, which could then be executed by another program, not very differently than today's Just-In-Time (JIT) compilers or pre-compiled interpreted languages. The language is the creation of Grace Hopper, a pivotal figure in the evolution of programming and the design of the first trully general-purpose languages. The two main strengths of COBOL was the rich I/O functionality for data file handling and the screen handling routines for creating terminal-based user I/O via forms and tables. Although functionally limited and with loquacious syntax by the programming standards of later language generations, COBOL was deemed extremely reliable and understandable by the programmers of those early days. So m
Read more

Bricks and towers in Prolog

Image
This program is a simple demonstration for illustrating how classic declarative programming can provide very intuitive and compact solution generators for logic problems and combinatorial tasks. In this example, a set of bricks with three sizes and a stability constraint ("do not put larger above") is coded to provide solution searching on all possible ways to build a stable tower of a specific height. Prolog's main advantage over other declarative programming languages is that even in the early '80s came with a rich library of common functionalities that made real-world application development easy. Turbo Prolog was probably the best option for PC machines, with efficient memory enhancements via more strict typing and other syntax shortcuts to limit the tree search in manageable space/time requirements for these platforms. Although now depricated by constrained and fuzzy logic paradigms, Prolog-style programming is still the most intuitive way to design simple expe
Read more

Channel Updates

Loading...