ESRC RDI

Aim

The goal of the project is to identify, engage with, and harvest the wealth of project management and collaborative working experience and expertise gained by social science researchers in HE and to share this with the broader HE community in a useable and 'time-relevant' format.

Rationale

• A recent survey of research staff at the University of Warwick identifies `the development of project management skills’ as the first most frequently identified request for support and `support in setting up and maintaining effective collaborative research projects’ as the second.
• Project management within HE is often the responsibility of people with little or no management expertise or experience.
• Observations of projects on which the project authors and colleagues have worked indicate that a great deal of experience is gained by people placed in the position of managing projects, but this experience is then not shared and is often lost as these people move on to other posts
• The project management advice that is available is drawn from the private sector, which often has little relevance to the goals, limitations and opportunities that occur within HE

Study

What is therefore proposed is, in part, an ethnographic study and, in part, a knowledge management audit. We are looking to identify researchers working on small, medium and large-scale projects who might be willing to share their experience of collaborative working on research projects.  We are hoping to identify two or three high-profile research project managers (possibly drawn from the TLRP) who would be willing to present their experience to the broader community of Social Science researchers at a Launch Event in June.  The aim is to gather and synthesise their experience, where possible, into generic principles for project management, which can then be used as the basis for guidance and development material.  

Additionally, we are looking for small clusters of early, mid and established career researchers to act as reference groups for the project, especially in relation to the production of the guidance and development material and its mode of delivery. We are also hoping to build a virtual community of practice to draw in researchers with expertise and experience and an interest in trying to improve support for early, mid and established career researchers.

By the end of the project we hope to have a bank of techniques, guidelines, even “top tips”, with which to provide assistance, training and consultancy for researchers in the HE sector. Ideally, with a wide range of cases, not only can generic principles about setting up and conducting projects be conveyed, but also specific advice about specific problems that researchers might be encountering.

Themes Emerging from the Pilot Interviews

• managing competing demands of the department in which one works and ensuring these don’t impinge on the time to work on the project,
• dealing with non-productive project workers (particularly when these may be senior to the project manager within the organisation)
• management of information, particularly techniques for allocating tasks and deadlines and disseminating this information.
• confirmation of the project authors’ contention that project management guidance from the private sector is inappropriate to the HE sector.