Project Meeting 2024.01.18 - ActivitySim/activitysim GitHub Wiki

Agenda

  • Phase 9 Scopes of Work and Contracting
    • Issue prioritization / milestones

Action Items

  • Phase 9 scopes of work to be updated by Joe, RSG, and WSP.

Meeting Notes

  • CS made edits to their scope of work to reflect prioritizing optimization of application mode, without ignoring estimation mode but not putting a lot of resources into making estimation mode working more efficiently.
  • In addition to performance, Joe wants to make sure any proposed changes are not at the cost of useability. This is an opportunity to identify opportunities to improve useability, some of which may have contributed to performance issues.
  • Jeff suggested to have all three consulting firms benchmark performance on various model runs, independently and simultaneously - with chunking as needed, with sharrow on and off. While there is some redundancy here, it helps to identify any issues related to different hardware and system configurations. Confirmed that this will be added to RSG and WSP SOWs.
  • Proposed process for the optimization task.
    • Jeff suggested that there be small group meetings with the engineering team (Jeff/CS, Sijia, and David) to discuss details and collaborate on new ideas. These meetings would our regularly to do deep dives into technical details.
      • Joe wants to be in the loop, more as "a fly in the wall" role. The engineering team agreed that's fine, but that they wouldn't schedule their regular meetings around the availability of those interested in joining. They will record their meetings if those interested in listening aren't available.
    • How is the group going to prioritize all the tasks so that active collaboration can happen?
      • Jeff proposed that they make a list of tasks, starting with the obvious problems, and divide it up
      • The engineering team will dive into individual issues and come back and describe the problem and brainstorm solutions.
      • From these initial efforts, they could cast a wider net and discuss things more broadly.
      • The engineering team would report back to the group about once every other week to check in on the priorities.
  • Recommendation to not be too prescriptive in the scopes of work so that the engineering team can be agile.