Where teams get stuck
The 3-2-1 rule is a common starting point for backups: three copies of important data, on two different kinds of storage, with one copy kept somewhere else. Check it against your institution's data policies.
Most research groups are not short of technical skill. What they lack is time, continuity and someone whose job it is to look after the tools everyone depends on. The same problems come up again and again:
- Data spread across spreadsheets with slightly different columns, emailed between people, with no single current version.
- Analysis scripts that only run on one laptop, written by someone who has since left.
- A lab or project website that nobody can update, on a platform nobody chose on purpose.
- Data collected in ways that are hard to analyze later: free-text fields where categories were needed, dates in five formats, no record of what changed.
- Uncertainty about the basics of security: who has access to what, where backups are, and what would happen if a laptop were lost tomorrow.
None of these is dramatic. Together they cost time every week and put data at risk.
What we can help with
- Project and lab websites
- Simple, fast sites that a team member can update, with sensible hosting and no unnecessary moving parts.
- Data collection tools and forms
- Surveys and forms designed so the data arrives structured, validated and ready to analyze.
- Data management and pipelines
- Folder conventions, version control and reproducible analysis pipelines that run from raw data to results.
- Dashboards and reporting
- Routine reports and simple dashboards that update from the data rather than by hand.
- Workflow automation
- Small, well-documented scripts that remove repetitive manual steps.
- Security and backup basics
- Access, passwords, backups and device practices appropriate to a research team, aligned with your institution's requirements.
- Documentation and handover
- Plain written guides, so the next person can run and maintain what exists.
How we think about it
Lock-in is when leaving a tool or supplier would cost so much that you stay even when it no longer serves you. Open formats and documented setups keep the exit door open.
- Boring, well-supported technology. Widely used tools with long track records and good documentation, chosen over whatever is newest.
- You own your data and code. Everything lives in accounts and repositories that belong to you or your institution.
- Security by default. Least access, sensible backups and careful handling of sensitive data from the start, not added later.
- Everything documented. If it is not written down, it is not finished.
- No lock-in. Open formats and standard tools wherever practical, so you can change direction or providers without starting again.
Five stages resting on one shared foundation. Most of the risk sits in the joins between stages and in the parts nobody wrote down.
How we engage
Work starts with a short written assessment. We look at what you have, talk to the people who use it, and write down what is working, what is fragile, and what we would change first, in order of importance.
The assessment is useful on its own. Many teams act on it themselves. If you would like help with the changes, building is optional and scoped separately, with its own written proposal.
Questions
No. Institutional IT looks after accounts, networks and institution-wide systems, and their policies come first. We focus on the research-specific layer they usually do not cover, and we work within their rules.
We design setups that handle sensitive data carefully, but we prefer not to hold it ourselves. Where access is needed, it is agreed in writing and limited to what the work requires.
That is the aim of every recommendation. We favor tools your team already knows or can learn quickly, and every piece of work ends with documentation and a handover.
No. The assessment stands on its own, and you are free to act on it however you choose.
Questions are always welcome. Ask a question