Team:TU Darmstadt/Team/PMS
Contents
Project Management in Science
Develop by Christian and Michael Sürder
The main challenge in large scale science projects is building a well functioning and efficient team, especially when there is a high diversity of people from different fields of expertise. Comparable to differing cultures, every field has its own little language, its own typical behavior and a characteristic way of working. To only utilize the advantages of every field and to avoid misunderstandings in the proceeding of the project it is necessary to train the team to efficiently work together.
The case „iGEM“
The iGEM competition has some special challenges which had to be taken into account.
- A student project with participants from different levels of knowledge
- A short amount of time
- Various fields of science like electrical engineering, informatics, physics, chemistry and of course biology and biomolecular engineering
- Most of the students have only little to no project experience
- The lab work is self-organized and also the materials are bought by the team which needs to (keep an eye?) control the costs of the project.
In the beginning of each iGEM competition, the team starts with nothing but a lab, motivated people and a little amount of money. First, one has to find a project idea, discuss if it's possible, plan the working steps and required amount of time, search for supporters and write grant application for the project. After that, the team members with little or no lab experience are introduced to the basics of lab work, theoretical and practical. On top of the scientific work, one crucial point is the presentation of our work and the communication with the general public and other researchers. Finally, our own internal communication has to be planned and organized. With all these requirements and challenges, it is imminently important to have a good start and a professional support with workshops and trainings in various fields to get everybody ready for the project.
Kick off
To avoid separation due the lack of familiarity to each other it is important to give the team an opportunity where they can get to know each other better. For that we’ve spent a whole weekend together before the start of the project. We used that time to talk about our personalities, our expertises and the experiences the team members have made so far in projects to avoid unnecessary mistakes. Together we defined rules for communication, assigned areas of responsibility and build up the whole working process for the iGEM project. The result was a motivated, loyal and well informed team and we can recommend this to every iGEM team.