SciPhD’s Project Management Program focuses on the essential practical aspects of project management and how to use those in the lab. Taught as a 2-Day Webinar series we focus on the three critical aspects of being an effective project manager: Managing the Planning, Managing the Work, and Managing the Team.

Day 1: Introduction to Project Management for Scientists

Applying Sound Project Management Principles to Complete Your Studies and Enhance Your Value to Professional Organizations

Success in professional organizations in large part relies on the ability to deliver projects that meet their objectives, on time and on budget. These are also the familiar triad of project management; Time, Cost, and Objectives (Scope). Research scientists utilize the principles of project management on a daily basis, often times without realizing the connection. Let’s take a look at how project management principles are commonly used by scientists. No alt text provided for this image

There are four questions that should typically be addressed when planning out a new project:

1. What am I trying to accomplish?

2. What are my success criteria?

3. What assumptions could affect this project?

4. How do I do it?

These four questions should be addressed in order and reveal both the deep experience scientists have with project management, as well as some of the gaps that can negatively affect them successfully completing their project on time, and on budget.

Scientists are true experts at addressing question #1. These are essentially the goals of the project which are defined by the hypothesis. All of our technical training, and experiential knowledge from being in the lab performing experiments, attending lab meetings, seminars, national and international meetings, and keeping up with the literature defines us as “subject matter experts” (SME) and allow us to formulate well-reasoned hypotheses, and rational approaches to test those hypotheses.

This experience in planning has also provided extensive credentials for question #3- identifying assumptions. Assumptions are those factors that can materially affect the project, but that are outside the direct control of the scientist. Examples are the abilities of a collaborator, or a core facility or outside lab to perform a critical component of the project. When these assumptions would negatively impact the project, they are “risks” and when they could benefit the project, they are “opportunities”. Scientists are experts in managing assumptions, by developing appropriate controls within experiments, considering their “Plan B” within their experimental design, and then making the tactical adjustments to keep the project on track.

That experimental design also addresses question #4, which lays out the experimental procedure, which, in project management language is essentially the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). So, scientists truly do have significant project management experience. They just don’t use project management language to describe what they do. If they learn the language of project management they can then demonstrate this highly valued skill when applying for jobs.

You may have noticed that question #2- defining success criteria has not yet been addressed. For the graduate student and postdoc, having clear agreement with your PI regarding success criteria is essential so that there is agreement as to when you are done. How to manage this question requires confidence, good communications skills and an ability to negotiate effectively. Mastering all four questions can have a significant impact on the academic scientists’ ability to deliver their well-defined project on time, and on budget.

So, when thinking about our project management experiences, for many academic scientists, at least three of the four questions are well within our capabilities and experiences, and we should be able to provide actual examples with accomplishments to demonstrate our expertise. Very valuable indeed during the job hunt!

What can we do to further improve our abilities with respect to the four questions?

1. Express our hypothesis (question #1) not only in terms of what we want to accomplish, but also why? Express the strategic value of our work- it’s potential impact now, and in the future, and its interconnectedness with other institutions and disciplines.

2. Find ways to advance our communications and negotiating skills in order to jointly define agreed success criteria with our PI (question #2) so that we have a clear vision of what is required to complete the project. Obviously, science often delivers unexpected results that require a re-think of the project, but in project management terms, this is just re-visiting the four questions.

3. Improve our ability to identify and anticipate risk, and develop strategies to address those circumstances (question #3). SWOT analysis is one very useful team-performance tool that can be used for this purpose: identifying your internal strengths and weaknesses, along with known external opportunities and threats, and determining in a programmatic way how to use your strengths to take advantage of those opportunities and mitigate the threats, and use those external opportunities to address your weaknesses wherever possible.

4. Further refining your ability to carefully plan out your project, its dependencies, and associated risks increases the likelihood of success (questio

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n #4). And those successes should be used as demonstrations of your experience as a project manager- the skill that is highly valued by hiring organizations.

The final piece in truly understanding the role of the project manager in a professional organization is your responsibility to develop your project team, establish trust and rapport with them, understand their personalities and use that knowledge to develop a high performing team that will succeed. The underlying communications skills required to be successful will be the subject of next week’s SciPhD Career Preparation Series.

Day 2: Project Management Q&A

Project Management Q&A (and some student comments too…)

During our online Project Management webinars, we get some excellent questions and comments from our academic scientists. We share here some of those comments, questions and our responses for you to get a better taste of how project management can impact you now and as you move on in your professional career.

Students Comments

“This is making me wonder why fresh Ph.D. students are not taught project management. Now, in my fourth year, I feel I’ve learned all of this by trial by fire – sink or swim, either you manage the project well or it fails and you’ve wasted months. I wish that I had had explicit training on this before my general exam!”

“I was literally JUST writing a note about how useful this would be in like yr2”

“I am in my 2nd year about to give my general exam… this is really valuable for me to plan”

“Are there any good, free project management software with Gantt chart generators that you’d recommend?”

“I’m finding it very helpful to hear how you construct the “essential questions” to address in order to meet the criteria for each phase or each role. Thank you!”

Q & A

These are actual questions that were asked during SciPhD Project Management Online Training programs, along with our replies.

Q: I feal like my PI is project customer, sponsor and stakeholder at the same time.

A: In most cases, your PI is likely your customer since they fund your research (cost), approve your project plan (objectives), and agree on estimiated time for completion (time). Your sponsor(s) are people who can use their administrative authority to get other stakeholders in line in support of your project (e.g. a department head). The stakeholders are those who are interested in the project but can’t materially affect the project directly (e.g. committee members, interested faculty).

Q: I am not sure whether time estimation is realistic. Take literature review for example. Scientists keep discovering more and more articles. How do I reasonably make an estimate?

A: This is a critical skill as a project manager. In professional organizations, you will likely be constrained by timelines that are difficult to change. You therefore must make decisions on how much literature review can be obtained as part of your project. One of your assumptions that you will state is that “the time allocated for review of the scientific literature will provide adequate background for the successful continuation of the project”. When you review the project plan with the customer, they will have to either agree with that assumption, or re-negotiate the available time for the project. These assumptions and agreements are documented so that you are covering your… … assumptions.

Q: What if you can identify the risk but cannot come up with a way to mitigate it just yet?

A: If you can’t mitigate the risk, then you have three choices: you either accept the risk, which essentially means that you and the project customer have agreed that the importance of the project is worth risking that eventuality occurring, or 2) you avoid the risk by changing the project if those conditions do occur. Finally, you could 3) transfer the risk to a third party who may be better suited to successfully complete that part of the project. For example, a core facility may be more likely to succeed at synthesizing a fusion protein that you, so you transfer the risk (and thereby lower risk of failure). Again, your customer should be part of that decision and formally sign off on the agreed approach.

Day 3: Project Management Case Study

Project Management Case Study

I want to reflect on the relevance of project management during my own PhD graduate experience. There is no question that the discipline of research science teaches you many essential project management principles. Designing well thought out experiments with adequate replicates, time courses and appropriate controls is actually an application of strategic and tactical planning, risk assessment and management, and defining of milestones and deliverables. That planning also clearly lays out the dependencies of one task on another- we can’t treat the animals with the fusion protein until we successfully complete the production of that protein.

But there is one aspect of my own graduate experience where a lack of project management awareness probably cost me at least 2 extra years. You may recall that there are four questions that should be addressed, in order, for any new project:

1. What is the goal?

2. What are the success criteria?

3. What are the assumptions?

4. How do I do it?

Many of us adequately cover 1, 3, and 4. The goals are set with our advisor. The assumptions are essentially the risks associated with the project that generate our “plan B”, as well as all the well thought out controls that are the foundation of good science. The “how do I do it”, or “tasks” in project management language are the product of our hands-on training in the lab from our PI, or other more senior people in our lab. But the success criteria, at least for me, was the elusive component that was really never defined before I dove into my project.

My project was to study the effects of a blood clotting factor, fibrinogen, on pulmonary inflammation. This project required the development of an animal (mouse) model to install the protein directly into the lungs of mice, and then follow the consequences of that treatment, and compare that to installation of control substances (saline as a negative control, and LPS as a positive control). Evaluation included histology, electron microscopy, and lavage of the lungs to determine the kinds of cells that were entering the lungs associated with any observed pathology.

This was an exciting and complicated study that took some time to develop. But with some practice, we got it to work, and discovered some interesting results. Was I done? Was I now going to graduate? It wasn’t clear. Based on the results, we (my PI) decided we should evaluate those lavaged cells in vitro, and see if we could find some pro-inflammatory factors. An exciting great idea. So we did it. And we found activity. Now for sure I’m done, right? Not so fast. Why don’t we see if we can reproduce that entire response in tissue culture, using continuous cell lines and primary culture from lung. Great idea! OK, lets do it. We did it. It worked. Now for sure, I’m done, right? Not so fast. We probably should try and identify the actual factor(s) in the supernatant that are responsible for the activity.

This went on and on for about 7 years before I finally graduated. I want to be clear, that I was complicit in this delay, in that I got excited about that next great question, but lost sight of what the real goal of the project was. Getting my PhD! If I had a clear agreement of the SUCCESS CRITERIA for completing my project at the beginning, I likely would have been done far earlier. It was obviously beneficial for my PI to have me there longer, but had there been more structure to my project, I would have had a much earlier exit. I recall during one of my committee meetings around year 5 one of the members commenting “why is he still here?”. Having success criteria defined, which is a core feature of disciplined project management would have been a big benefit!

Day 4: Project Management Interview Prep

Project Management Interview Prep

Below are three example interview questions a PhD-level candidate applying for a job in a professional organization might be asked, along with a proposed response. The questions are being asked by the hiring manager who has a PhD in Biomedical Sciences and 10 years working in a large biotech company and managing a high performing team. The job description emphasizes project management-related skills and experience as highly desired.

Following each response is a brief commentary that discusses the relevance and value of the interview response.

Q: Tell me about your research

A: The major objective of my project was to develop a novel vaccination approach to treat previously untreatable cancers. This project involved about eight people who were also involved in other projects as well, so the scheduling and planning were really important. I ran a project team that first clearly laid out the objectives, the resources needed, and clearly identified the major deliverables and the timeline. This ensured that everyone on my team had a shared purpose which helped to keep everyone motivated. Most importantly we assessed the potential risks for each part of the project and how to manage those risks should they occur. I think that by having mitigation strategies for most of the parts of the project on the critical path really benefited us in delivering on our goals on time, and on budget. I’d be happy to go into as much detail as you like.

Commentary: Rather than discuss the project using scientific jargon, the candidate framed the answer using project management language. This answer reveals the candidate understands the principles of project management and applies them when doing work. This is perceived as valuable because in professional organizations, fiscal responsibility is key in delivering the project on schedule, and is aligned with the iron triangle of project management: Time, Cost, and Objectives. Commenting on the shared sense of purpose further reveals the leadership capabilities of the candidate who clearly understands what motivates people to succeed (and be good team members).

Q: Tell me about a time when you made a change to improve the productivity of your lab.

A: Protein purification is a key part of our laboratory activity towards identifying factors that cause and prevent disease. This is a multistep process that is very precisely scripted with respect to exact protocol. Our team uses performance metrics to evaluate each step in the protein purification process, and recently incorporated a new technology that allowed us to keep the project ahead of schedule, with greater throughput and purity of the product while saving dollars as well. Would like me to provide any further detail?

Commentary: Performance metrics are commonly used for continuous improvement which is important for companies to stay ahead of their competition. Being able to systematically evaluate a multi-step process and identify the return on investment (ROI) for each of those steps and what can be done to increase that ROI is a valuable asset to any organization.

Q: How do you define success? How would I know you are committed to achieving success? Give me an example from your own life, (work or personal), that was a learning experience for you.

A: During my postdoc I was given a lot of latitude to run my research project by my PI. Despite this, I thought it was very important to establish mutually agreed success criteria for the project so that we both knew the boundaries of the project, and when the project was complete. This provided a shared sense of purpose and allowed us to stay focused on the mutually agreed objectives which I successfully completed on time and on budget. I’d be happy to provide additional details if you like.

Commentary: Here, the candidate was given free rein to do whatever they want, yet they stress the importance of establishing mutually agreed upon goals and success criteria, to develop a shared sense of purpose. In academic research, we can often “take the science wherever it leads”, which is a powerful attraction for staying in academia and can lead to important new discoveries. But in the business world, where success requires being good stewards of the resources provided towards delivering projects on time that meet the required objectives, demonstrating that knowledge and embracing its discipline elevates your perceived value.

Day 5: Project Management: Use It Now

Project Management Practical Tips to Bring To The Lab

Project management skills are highly valued in virtually all professional organizations, and the good news, as we’ve seen in the four articles this week, is that you as academic scientists apply those same principles every day… or at least some of them! So lets just take a quick look at some of the most impactful skills that you can bring back to the lab that will either help you finish your project on time, build your body of experiences to cite while applying for jobs, or both.

1. Success Criteria: Define your success criteria with your PI- Having a clear mutually agreed success criteria should benefit both you and your PI. It gives you a roadmap to completing your project, and sets realistic expectations for your PI with respect to what he/she can expect from you while you are there. Additionally, we know that a shared sense of purpose (which this should advance) is a powerful motivating tool in team performance dynamics. And the good news is that next week, our topic for our continuing series will be communications, which should provide you with some specific tools and insights with which to have these conversations with your PI.

2. Risk Management: This is something that you do every day when planning expe

riments, controls, considering your “plan B” if an idea doesn’t work. Start inventorying how you go about identifying and managing risks throughout your project as these can be very powerful anecdotes during the interview process to demonstrate your knowledge and familiarity with project management principles. One really effective way to identify potential risks in your project is to draw a process map, or network diagram of your project that starts with your major goal at the top, and branches out to cover the major objectives (specific aims) as branches. You can then evaluate each branch from the bottom of the diagram to the top and ask the question “what could possibly go wrong”, and then apply appropriate risk mitigation strategies to address those concerns.

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These simple steps can have a significant positive impact on your current project and help you see light at the end of the tunnel.