Agile Research

...is it possible?

I was looking at trying to manage tasks/projects in the field biology realm.

Strikes I'm considering thus far:
- hard and fast deadlines that you can't miss that are all or nothing.
- projects change frequently so estimation is tough to get down

Deadlines...

In my experience with agile thus far, it works fine when you know you want to launch a new software project by a certain time with whatever features you can develop by then. Or if you know you need a certain feature set but don't really care when it gets done. When you have both criterion that makes it much more difficult.

Just like you can't guarantee to a business owner that there site will be done with all their features in exactly one month and guarantee the developers a sustainable pace, neither can you do that in research. So is there a way to adapt to these criterion? The benefit is that the deadlines usually pop-up far enough ahead of time that you wouldn't be able to spend all the time between now and then on that project even if you wanted to.

Project Turnover...

For agile projects I've been a part of we generally do a pretty bad job of estimating stories at the beginning and a much better job towards the end. Takes a sprint or two to get the hang of it. If projects were turning over frequently, this could be a nightmare.

In the academic world, there are constantly many things pressing on your time. Teaching responsibilities, data gathering, data analysis, and synthesis/publication. For any particular research project, a researcher has to start in the data gathering stage often using new tools and new methods are these estimable? Then as they move on to the data analysis, they again are often using new tools, and new methods. The writing at last is fairly familiar. The number of graphs and the length of the article may change but writing is always familiar ground.

Thoughts?

So how does one estimate such things? Ideas for agile in the research world? Am I just trying to force it?

I appreciate your suggestions, comments, feedback!