About plans
On ‘data analysis plans’ in grant proposals and the like
I often get to read project proposals involving production and analysis of (biological) data, with multi-year time horizons, and very specific choices of methods, tools, and proposed actions, nowadays usually spiced up with latest instances of deep neural networks.
Consider Mike Tyson’s “Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth”1 or Helmuth von Moltke’s “No plan survives the first enemy contact”2.
A detailed action plan is a nice thing to have - it shows that you know the literature and the methods and tools that exist.
But…: IMHO, more important than the detailed action plan is to have the right people, skills, and resources in place and to be able to (re)act quickly upon the data that get produced — if, when, and at the quantity and quality they have - and to possibly rapidly changing scientific questions. This also includes data management infrastructure, technical issues of data exchange, and if necessary, legal (IP) and ethical issues. All this is not cheap, it needs proper resourcing.
In other words: “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower.