Here is the outline for my workshop this morning on project management at THATCamp New England.
Conceptualizing the project
- Collaboration — reach out to others in the field; know the field
Writing the Grant: Necessary fictions
- Follow the guidelines
- Select the staff
- Create the workplan
- Key Deliverables
- Estimating work
- Budgeting: personnel, materials, travel, indirect
- Office of Sponsored Programs
Get the Grant==>Hooray!! What’s next?
- Redo the workplan — reassess in light of changing technologies and staff availability and skills
- Collaboration — reach out to others in the field; know the field
Team management: Trust
- Protect the staff: administrative concerns, competing demands
- Supply the staff: software, hardware, space
- Meetings (syncronous and asyncronous communication)
- Individual (how are things going? what can I do for you?)
- Larger group (where are we? what problems do we foresee? how shall we proceed? concensus building)
- Small group (paired programming, etc.)
- Tracking systems
- Github/SVN for tracking coding tasks and issues
- Basecamp for tracking other project activities and deliverables
PI Responsibilities:
The buck stops with you, so it helps if you are at home with complex organizational systems and detail oriented.
- Budget and Deliverables
- Conflict management
- Individual time management
- Communication with the grant officers
- Communication and work with the institutional systems
- Administration
- Office of Sponsored Programs
- Learning enough about all of the elements of the project and the technologies to make decisions comfortably.