Project Management in Distributed Collaborative Research

1
Project Management in Distributed Collaborative
Research

• Stephen Brewer, Deputy Project Manager,
  OMII-Europe
• s.brewer_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
• Managing for Usability Challenges and
  Opportunities for E-Science Project Management
• OeRC Workshop, Oxford e-Research Centre,
  University of Oxford, 10-11th April, 2008

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Outline

• Introduction
• OMII-Europe project experience
• Objectives scope
• Processes governance internal external
  connections
• Selling the vision engaging with users
• Challenges of leading and coordinating virtual
  teams
• Use cases observations
• Lessons learned and conclusions

3
Introduction

• Project management
• traditional (waterfall) vs. new (Agile)
• Distributed teams (pros and cons)
• out of sight out of sync (conflict or
  collaboration)
• build trust in virtual teams through interaction
• Collaboration (pros and cons)
• combining skills or losing authority?
• funding opportunities and constraints
• Research and engineering
• investigative methods and formal processes

4
OMII-Europe project experience
Objectives

• Design and implement a QA process
• Re-engineer identified components to public
  standards
• Repository with software, documentation and
  training materials easy to use and accessible
• Brand awareness - current and potential grid
  users
• Demonstrate useful interoperability between grid
  infrastructures (publish guidelines)
• Provide confidence through published benchmarks

5
OMII-Europe project experience
Scope

• Networking activities (NA1,2,3)
• Management, Outreach, Training
• 8 Person Effort
• Service Activities (SA1,2,3)
• Repository, QA, Support
• 25 Person Effort
• Joint Research Activities (JRA1,2,3,4)
• Re-engineering, new services, integration,
  benchmarking
• 67 Person Effort

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Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute for
Europe

• EU-funded project FP6 (8M over 2 years May
  06 - April 08)

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Processes the Virtuous Cycle
Technology transfer with Grid projects and
standards organisations
Standards Compliance Testing and QA
JRA2
New Components
Standards Implementation
Components
JRA1
IN
Globus
Benchmarking
Repository
OUT
OMII-UK
Components
CROWN
Supported Components on Eval. Infrastructure
Integrated Components
8
Governance structure
9
Internal and external connections
DEISA
European Commission
Universities
EGEE
OMII-Europe
WISDOM
iSGTW
Research establishments
Open Grid Forum
BioInfoGrid
10
Selling the vision

• Selling the vision
• Refining objectives simplify, clarify and
  rehearse
• Telling the story articulate the elevator pitch
• Selling the vision use every opportunity
• Engaging with users
• Identifying user types infrastructure managers,
  developers and e-scientists
• Locating the users OGF, EGEE, e-Challenges, EU
• Meeting the users booths, presentations and
  workshops

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Coordinating virtual teams

• Challenges
• Drawing partners into the project hosting
  meetings
• Conflicting aims understand partner issues
• Communication channels
• Use cases
• Other projects as potential users
• WISDOM scenario
• Observations
• Teams will evolve people, relationships, skills,
  aims
• Virtual teams need to be robust but fluid equip
  people with skills
• Broad range of skills required management,
  training, technical, research, communication

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Negotiation and communication

• Getting to Yes by Fisher Ury
• Principled negotiation ideas
• Win-win negotiation
• Dont bargain over positions
• Separate people from the problem
• Focus on interests, not positions
• Communication
• Listen actively and acknowledge what is being
  said
• Speak to be understood
• Speak about yourself, not about them
• Speak for a purpose

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Lessons learned

• Ramp up takes time
• Specialist staff to recruit
• Clarify processes, structures, roles, goals
• Keep the vision alive
• Understand a complex and ambitious project
• Face to face meetings build trust and enthusiasm
• Understand encourage staff, devolve
  responsibility
• Encourage and facilitate communication
• Email, wikis, skype conferences, travel, ad hoc
  meetings

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Conclusions

• Successful management of distributed short term
  teams depends on the rapid establishment of trust
  across the project workforce
• Face to face meetings regular communication
• Support work groups with resources
  encouragement
• Having established trust, teams must be
  motivated, focused and empowered within a well
  understood, though not inflexible, role network.
• Maintain communicate clear vision of project
  goal
• Vision may evolve must stay common understood

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Final thought building trust

• Cockburn observes significant attention spent on
  building trust amongst the team by distributed
  team leaders
• Vast amount of energy invested into
  communication on a daily basis, to achieve
  opportunistic learning, trust, and feedback.
• Agile Software Development, Cockburn, 2002

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Thank you

• University of Southampton
• Professor Peter Henderson, PI and Board Chair
• Dr Alistair Dunlop, Project manager
• Dr Nishadi De Silva, Technical writer
• Partners
• Dr Achim Streit, FZJ, chair Programme Management
  Committee
• Technical Committee chairs, Dr Steven Newhouse,
  Davy Virdee
• Activity Leaders
• EU
• See paper for references
• Project Management in Distributed Collaborative
  Research
• Email s.brewer_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk