Project Management Lessons

What have we learnt so far about project management that would be useful for future collaborations - between us or between others?

  • importance of regular communication (obvious, but not overstated)
    • skype/teleconf meetings
  • hazards and benefits of multiple issuetracker/SVN instances
    • local staff not involved in cross-institution communication under-informed
    • relationship between project-level (joint) issue tracker and institutional or departmental issue tracker(s)
    • issue trackers taking on life of their own and overwhelming actual work completion?
    • think about how you're going to handle this stuff before/as you get started (include as a rubric in proposal)
  • travel costs: participants' institution pays
  • google docs (good or bad?)
  • wikis (good or bad?)
    • what they mean for the participants
    • what they mean for funders
    • what they mean for dissemination
  • meetings?
    • relationship with reporting (report as agenda and minutes)
    • newly formed teams could benefit greatly from a "launch" meeting/workshop very early in the performance period
  • time-frame
    • one-year time frame is very short (too short if you're not already collaborating closely)
    • generally, a 3-4 month incubation or ramp-up period (or earlier notification of award) would better allow for putting personnel, systems, contracts in place