PI Questions

These are the questions the PI asks of a piece of work. Ask them of an EPIC's current state before proposing what comes next. An epic session asks them before drafting a spawn brief, a manuscript session before proposing actions, and staff asks them of every EPIC in weekend mode (/bip-staff).

• Back to the goal. What was this work for, and does the next step serve it, or is it adding machinery?
• Simplest direct measure. Can we report a number instead of setting a threshold, or measure the thing directly instead of through a proxy?
• Literature first. Has someone already measured or solved this? Search the literature before designing: the local library, then ASTA (/bip-lit).
• Distrust the surprise. A result that would surprise us, or two of our numbers that disagree, goes to surprising-conclusion-skeptic before anything builds on it, and the skeptic's own quotes are checked against their source.
• Matched comparison, runtime included. Is the comparison matched, with execution time measured against the reference? Does this step's runtime matter for the whole pipeline? Turn knobs only after that comparison.
• Define the terms. Every unit, abbreviation and quantity is defined where it is first used.