Heilmeier Questions and Two Parables for Graduate Students

Both of these items can be found on the interwebs but I thought it useful, from my own categorical process and your possible benefit, to once more replicate them!

Heilmeiers Questions or Catechism.
Dr. Heilmeier was a director of ARPA in the 70s and while there he had developed a set of questions that he expected ever new research program to answer. These questions can consequentially be applied to PhD research; your work should attempt to answer these questions:

1. What are you trying to do? What is the problem? Why is it hard? [don't add jargon, be clear as if you were talking to an uninformed individual just now hearing about this problem]
2. How is it done today and what are the limits of current practice? [in academia this would consider prior work]
3. What's new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful? [novelty]
4. Who cares? 
5. What difference will it make if you are successful; what impact will success have, and how is that measured? [impact]
6. What are the risks and the payoffs? [striking a balance]
7. How much will it cost? [question for the advisor ;)]
8. How long will it take? [question for the graduate student]
9. What are the milestones to check for success, and how will progress be measured? [an important step that I fumbled on many times myself --- small steps equate to a large effort]

I note here that I have condensed the questions just a bit, and I have added a few asides to link the questions to academic research. What I assume to be more representative of the original questions can be found here: http://www.design.caltech.edu/erik/Misc/Heilmeier_Questions.html.

Two Parables for Graduate Students.
A humorous read sent to me by a colleague and friend. I do not replicate it here but rather link to it, and encourage any graduate research student to give it a quick read through. I'll foreshadow a rather unique and familiar relationship between a Rabbit and a Lion.

http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/~mfleck/parable.html