Managing research projects
Managing research projects is complex – but with the right tools and systems in place you can make them efficient and straightforward.
- Project management tools
- Setting up your research project
- Monitoring your research project
- Reporting on your project
- Making the most of your project
How to best manage your research project?
Having been successful in attracting funding for your project, you will now have to lead it from set-up to completion. The following information takes you through the key stages:
1. Setting up a research project
2. Monitoring a research project
3. Reporting on your research project
4. Making the most of your research project
Project management tools
Some simple project management tools to get you started include:
A straightforward table that lays out what is to be done, by whom and by when, is enormously valuable – this can then be shared between the members of the team. Important milestones should be highlighted. The addition of a column that indicates the status of the task adds more power to this simple tool. Some teams like to use a traffic lights approach. Green for on schedule, amber for concerns and red for behind schedule. This allows you (or anybody else) to tell briefly how things are going. Other organisational tools for cross-team working include Monday.com and Trello.
If your ‘to-do’ list of tasks becomes too long you may find it more efficient to use a specific organisational tool such as Microsoft OneNote. This is an extremely useful tool that integrates well with the rest of the Microsoft Office suite. There are of course other products available.
Something that all project managers should do is a risk analysis. It is helpful to split risk into two aspects: probability and consequence. Probability is the likelihood of something happening, consequence is how serious things are if it does happen. An important reason for separating them is that you manage them in different ways. If the risk is the loss of a key member of staff, then you manage the probability by trying to make their job secure and make them feel valued. You manage the consequence by ensuring that their work is properly documented, and that other people are trained in the key areas of their work.
- A common and useful project management tool is the Gantt chart (named after Henry L Gantt who introduced the technique in 1903). This has ‘tasks’ down the vertical axis and ‘time’ across the horizontal. The duration of a task is shown by the length of a horizontal bar, and the timing of the task by its position on the chart.
- Gantt charts can be easily produced in a Word table or an Excel spreadsheet but they are more powerful if they are generated with tailored software such as Microsoft Project. Many higher education institutions have a licence for Project or other similar software.
Setting up a research project
Project finances
- Keep on top of the project finances – there are likely to be quite detailed procedures to follow regarding purchasing and other expenditure – but making time in your schedule to keep up to date and on track with project finances will avoid possible problems later on in the life of the project.
- Get in contact with the person who looks after your project finances from an institutional perspective
- Familiarise yourself with the finance system and financial processes of your institution
- Review the project finances and ensure that you have been awarded what you had anticipated
- Make sure that you are aware of any stipulations in the contract/offer as to what might be ineligible expenditure.
Approvals
Depending on the nature of your project there may be ethical approvals to obtain for your research. Make sure you allow enough time for this, bearing in mind how frequently the relevant approvals review board or committee meets in your organisation.
Building a team
If you are employing new research staff you will need to liaise with your Personnel or Human Resources (HR) department, who will manage the process for you. You are likely to be responsible for providing all the details of the posts you are offering and arranging interview panels. Usually training and guidance will be offered to help you with these tasks.
Legal conditions
Ensure that you review the contract/terms and conditions of the grant before you start, as there may well be legal obligations on the project as part of the contract, for example in relation to confidentiality, publication arrangements or reporting requirements. Your organisation should be able to provide access to legal advice if you require it.
Monitoring a research project
Monitoring timescales
- Your project may have been agreed on the basis of a clear timescale and deadlines
- If you find your research is not going to the agreed plan, you may need to adapt the timescales
- You may need to apply for extensions to the project timescale if there have been any delays
- If you foresee any difficulties, you should speak to your research office and the funder – most problems can be resolved with early communication.
Monitoring finances
- While the project is running you need to monitor the finances.
- Your research office will probably provide you (or you can get from your finance system) monthly expenditure reports.
- Check these (as you would with your own monthly bank statements). Are there things missing that you expected to see? If so, follow them up. Clerical mistakes can be made in allocating expenditure to the right project or failing to make payments.
- Or there may have been a problem earlier in the process – for example an order for a piece of equipment may not have gone through; if left unchecked, this could adversely affect the delivery date and hence your project.
Dealing with issues
It is also possible that there may be items of expenditure that you do not recognise, if something is charged to your project account in error. It should be simple to sort this out, so don’t delay – the longer you leave sorting out the details, the more effort will be required to put things right.
Develop your own ‘shadow’ system in case your institutional system fails or is inadequate in some way. This doesn’t have to be elaborate though – a simple spreadsheet that shows the budget line and columns for:
- Originally planned expenditure
- Current commitments
- Planned spend
- Balance uncommitted.
Top tips
- What is shown in the finance system is definitive so you will need to cross reference your data with the finance data periodically to make sure that things are at least approximately in line.
- Also remember to regularly review your expenditure against the project budget. Are you going to overspend or underspend?
Reporting on your research project
Periodic reports
- The funders of your research, and the institution at which you are carrying out your research will both want to be informed at regular intervals about the progress of your project.
- Continuation of funding may be dependent on submitting required reports on time.
- Some funders apply financial and other penalties for late reports so project management is extremely important.
- Check both the internal reporting requirements of your institution and the external reporting requirements of your funder, e.g. the funder may require annual financial and progress reports to be submitted but your institutional requirements may specify that you should update your line manager about progress every quarter (or vice versa).
Templates for reporting
Normally there will be a template for financial reporting provided. Depending on your institution financial reporting may be undertaken by the research office on your behalf; however, always remember that as Principal Investigator you have overall responsibility for the project, including its finances.
The final report
- At the end of the project, you usually produce a final expenditure statement and a final report. Your research office may complete the former for you, but you have overall responsibility for the accuracy of both reports.
- Therefore, ensure that you cross-check both statements to confirm that there are no inconsistencies, and that you have reported accurately on expenditure in the main report if you have discussed certain items.
Records
At the end of your project, you will need to make sure that your records are complete and in order. It is possible that your project could be subject to audit at some stage in the following few years, and having a complete set of records at this stage could save a great deal of time later.
Making the most of your research project
At the end of your project, reflect on how it went:
- Did you underspend or overspend?
- What might you have done differently to better use the resources?
- How would you change things for the next project?
- Indeed, would you have costed things differently?
Take this experience not only into your next project but also your next project proposal.
Having an impact
- Increasingly, funders want to know the impact of their funding. Many now want post-project reports of outputs from their funding.
- Similarly, funders and institutions are becoming more interested in non-academic outputs from projects. Did your work have an impact on government policy? Has your discovery led to the development of a new medical treatment?
- Your institution may have a method of attributing research outputs and impact to projects – you should use this.
Things to take away
- Use organisational tools such as Microsoft OneNote or diagrams to help you keep track of your project.
- Having been successful in attracting funding for your project, you will now have to lead it from set-up to completion.
- Keep on top of the project finances and get in contact with the person who looks after your project finances from an institutional perspective
- Monitoring the progress of your project carefully against your original plan in respect of timescales and expenditure.