As graduate students you already have extensive experience in project management, that is, your master’s thesis or dissertation is a multi-year project that you manage with the help of your faculty advisors. Think of your own research project. You developed an idea or a problem. Then you built the necessary expertise to expand your idea or solve your problem. You likely negotiated funding and travel arrangements to pursue your research. You did all this within a scheduled timetable that concluded with the production of a thesis or dissertation as your deliverable.
That is project management, taking an idea and moving it through the necessary processes to create something tangible.
You have experience as a project manager in academia as well as in your own personal life (each meal you cook is a small exercise in project management), but experience alone does not confer ability. Like all things, project management is a skill that you can improve through training and practice. The resources gathered here will help you develop the skills necessary to excel in different project management scenarios. A crucial aspect of managing any project is working with people. Leadership, that is, motivating and mobilizing others to work toward a common objective, is a critical attribute of effective project managers. Building a competent team that can work together and collaborate to achieve its goals is vital to successful project management.
- mobilize diverse teams to work collaboratively toward common goals
- create timelines for projects and achievable benchmarks to measure progress
- foster innovation and creativity among team members