Team:TU Darmstadt/Team/PMS
Contents
Project Management in Science
Developed 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 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.
Team structure
The team structure which we have built with the team during the Kick off was based on segmentation of the project into different subgroups. Using this strategy, we were able to work on different projects simultaneously and made it possible to work on such a big project. Every subgroup had its own leader who was responsible for his members and to overlook the progress of experiments in his team. For not losing the overview over the whole project we determined Thomas Dohmen as the coordinator of our iGEM team who was in contact with every leader of the subgroups. The task of the coordinator was also to keep an eye on every project part and being the responsible person for external contacts.
Leadership workshop
To prepare the leaders of the subgroups for their job, we trained them separately in a workshop to build some strategies for everyone to keep their team motivated and susceptible for input. We pinned down signs of problems in a group and how to handle these. Agile workflow To find and solve problems as fast as possible we established the “Monday meeting”. The leaders of every subgroup met up and gave a short update on their experiments, problems and possible solutions of these in the last week. Afterwards the other leaders could make suggestions for different solutions. Finally, each subgroup leader presented his teams plans for the upcoming week. With this systems we were able to optimize the working process in a really short time and to react flexibly to changes or problems in the subgroups. Important is that the “Monday meeting” is rigorously moderated and as short as possible (about one hour) to lose not more time than necessary in the lab.
Subgroup communication workshop
Sometimes it is complicated to solve problems in your own group. Unfortunately these kind of problems are typical reasons for a team to break apart. To prevent these situations we met with all subgroups every six weeks and analyzed the current situation of the subgroup s together. As a result we managed to identify growing problems and solve them before they affected the team.
Poster session and presentation workshop
Of course everybody was excited about travelling to Boston and being part of the giant jamboree. However, English is not our native language and we needed practice. Therefore we developed workshops to train our presentation skills in English. These workshops were divided in poster presentations and the project presentation. In the poster session we have to deal with the situation of a lot of people passing by and looking at our poster. The challenge is the interaction between the team members during the presentation without blocking the poster and helping each other so that our experts in the different project parts are talking to the right people. In the project presentation we have a limited amount of time to convince with our project and to highlight our achievements. So a fluent talk and a good pronunciation is important to avoid confusion. The presentation itself has to be prepared and designed under consideration of the rules and strategies for a successful talk.
How to find a sponsor
Sponsoring is one important part of iGEM. Without support it is really difficult to manage all the costs for the wet and dry lab. To prepare the members for the acquisition of sponsoring, we trained a small group of our team and sensitized them in techniques of communication and negotiations. These experts contacted companies, presented our project to them and successfully convinced them to support our team. Poster session and presentation workshop Of course everybody was excited about travelling to Boston and being part of the giant jamboree. However, English is not our native language and we needed practice. Therefore we developed workshops to train our presentation skills in English. These workshops were divided in poster presentations and the project presentation. In the poster session we have to deal with the situation of a lot of people passing by and looking at our poster. The challenge is the interaction between the team members during the presentation without blocking the poster and helping each other so that our experts in the different project parts are talking to the right people. In the project presentation we have a limited amount of time to convince with our project and to highlight our achievements. So a fluent talk and a good pronunciation is important to avoid confusion. The presentation itself has to be prepared and designed under consideration of the rules and strategies for a successful talk.
Socializing
People need the chance to get to know each other besides the scientific work. Our socializing events were providing a platform for interacting in a non-professional context. We were talking about our interests and worries, our studies and families, had barbecues and mostly a lot of fun. This strengthened our team spirit and we were able to discuss and solve difficulties and disagreements within the team, based on an atmosphere of trust and respect. In specific time intervals we were launching special events, like an iGEM game day (See photo). Such events provided a good basis for personal contacts and friendships which will endure also after the end of the project. We recommend to every team to plan these kind of events every four to eight weeks to keep the team in good spirit.