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The Einstein Factor in Leading Science Based Projects - Part 3

Written by: Jeremy Tucker

Article Overview: When asked if the people, practices and techniques required to lead science research projects are different from those in the general population, the answer is not just YES, but a resounding DUH!

The Einstein Factor in Leading Science Based Projects - Part 3

The Einstein Factor in Leading Science Based Projects - Part 3

By Martin Wartenberg and Victoria Tucker, November 2007

Step 3: Execution Phase

One of the primary difficulties during this phase is to maintain a single minded focus on the project. Especially on a longer project, a project team can become bored, frustrated and revert to their individual functional assignments. They may even want to jump ship to join some other project with seemingly more appealing project parameters.

What works well is to “chunk” the project into shorter phases (less than six months) with concrete milestones that are met including documenting results. This alleviates some of the frustrations related to a long term multi-year project.

The other primary difficulty is maintaining project scope. Scientists, who have natural curiosity, tend to chase after what may be promising lines of inquiry. The project leader’s job requires assessing these digressions and to decide whether or not to chase after the possibilities, go back to the original scope or shelve the promising approach for another time and another project.
Step 4: Control and Monitoring Phase

Monitoring a project’s performance is exasperated by getting status from members of the team. Often times, the project leader will be found chasing down status information. This usually requires the leader abandoning the computer screen in lieu of walking the lab hallways.

If you’re the leader, don’t be put off by some of the more common responses from team members:

* I’m almost done, and I’ll get back to you real soon.
* If you stopped bothering me about status, I’d already be done.
* I think I’m 50% complete. I’ve spent about ½ the time and ½ the money allocated so I must be ½ done.
* I’ve missed the due date, but I’ll catch up some time real soon.
* Don’t worry about the lack of documented results, its all in my head and I’ll sit down soon and put it all on paper.

The project leader’s job is to accurately determine where the project tasks are at any point in time and identifying deviations that impact project objectives.

It’s sometimes constructive to have a scientist or technical specialist in the same area ascertain actual progress, especially if in an area that the leader is not comfortable with.

If there are negative deviations, work with the folks that caused the deviation in the first place to see if there’s a way to catch up. If not, get the people that caused the gap to work with down-steam groups such as quality, test, or regulatory to see if time can be made up by acceleration or fast tracking.

Another suggestion in the controlling and monitoring phase is to have the leader select the review period based on the time lines of the project. The concept of the weekly or monthly meeting doesn’t always make sense. As the project leader, determine how long you can go between knowing what’s occurring. It may be weeks or multiple months that make for the best reporting cycles.

And, scientists should not be burdened with putting on dog and pony shows that lead to PowerPointitis presentations. That’s an unnecessary expense no matter how you slice and dice resources. Rather, use the same data that the scientists are using to track their own work as project input. Bring in some other people who can help package the presentation for a targeted audience. We can almost guarantee the team’s gratefulness at not having to spend oodles of hours playing the “presentation guessing game”.

Related Articles
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Article Tags: chunk, computer screen, concrete milestones, digressions, due date, einstein factor, execution phase, frustrations, functional assignments, hallways, minded focus, natural curiosity, phase one, project leader, project parameters, project scope, promising approach, step 3, team members, wartenberg



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