Where to from here?

[stephstammel]

When I started the project, I'd envisioned a few basic workflow tools to augment R as an all-round consulting powerhouse.

I was particularly thinking about workflows, inspired by Jenny Bryan's take, but from a consulting point of view, which sometimes has a longer, more complex time cycle than analysis on its own. In particular I was thinking more or less about using R to structure/automate some of these ideas here and here.

One possible extension I'd like to do is extend the createDocumentation() functions, possibly by automating some of the functions in this proto-package.

In particular, it would be great to have an automate testing function that would allow users to check 'is this data set I'm using the same one that Fred thinks he sent me'. (May or may not be inspired by various version control fumblings from the distant past :) )

That said, I think there is a strong appetite for developing functions that would allow a more sophisticated time management system to be implemented from within R, more generally. Especially in team based workflows, we can use the tidy data frames cataloguing time use to create some automated functions allowing teams to track and analyse the time they're spending on projects.

Other things I've thought about doing is creating functions to manage the documentation lifecycle in R (proto-attempt in the createProject() function set of directories) and document the documents that get created in the project (not all of which will be in R in a diverse team).

Any other thoughts about where we could/should take the project? More than happy to open this up and push it in different directions. Your contributions have been brilliant, I really appreciate the input!

[rosseji]

I'm just beginning an adventure doing data science consulting, and when I noticed your package. I was particularly interesting in the time keeping, but any tools to simply the workflow I'll be trying to put into practice.

Those goals sound great. Happy to help out in any way, but at this stage am less experienced in consulting so will be seeking to learn a lot from others.

[stephstammel]

Well your contributions have been invaluable, I really appreciate them. It'd be really good to have your perspective going forward with the project because it was people like yourself I had it in mind for - great skills already, but moving towards consulting and could find some structure useful as they get started.

I guess we just keep going for the moment then! It's shaping up quite nicely :)

[danwwilson]

One of the best things about consulting is when you can re-use something you've done before or you have a basic template for the project workflow. It would be interesting if you could find a way to incorporate some analysis templates (stuff you do consistently). I do this in my own package by having some template files in the package, but I wonder if there is a more flexible approach.

[rosseji]

@stephdesilva Sorry I have been MIA. I'm still doing consulting work, but it tended towards more R tutorials, function and package building than data analysis. If things progress really well I'd hope that I get to do some more analytics work and that might mean to can contribute here more.

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