Chapter 7 Team Management
There’s a lot happening as you start your graduate degree. To make things easier for everyone, I will (force) the research group to use the following tools:
Microsoft Outlook for the calendar functionality*
Slack for project and general intralab communications (as opposed to email)
Github for version control and code storage
*you’re free to use any other mail/calendar app! My one request is that you find one that can sync with my Outlook calendar so you can see my availability for meetings
I will highly recommend the following tools for ease of consistency (and general bad experiences with competing products), but you are more than welcome to use an alternative.
- Microsoft Word for manuscript writing
- Zotero for reference management (we have a lab account; integrates with Word or Google Docs)
- GitProject for project management
- OneDrive AND Group Sharepoint AND local/external hard drives for data backup
7.1 Managing Up
To help me help you, it would be great for you to do the following:
Be prepared for our regular one-on-one meetings to: remind what was outstanding last time, discuss progress, new questions/roadblocks, and plans for next meeting. If you’d like a template to start with/adapt, consider using this
As a rule of thumb, if you’re stuck on something for more than several hours, seek help!
Keeping good documentation of code, data, assumptions. I encourage you to use a combination of a markdown system (RMarkdown, Quarto, Jupyter notebook, etc.) for code and research notebook (e.g. OneNote)
I am happy to communicate via Slack messages and face-to-face chats
Slack has the benefit of keeping a record of our discussion for posterity, and is great for short/easy questions
Face-to-face is better for in-depth discussions, multiple topics, etc.
Keep on top of important dates for degree milestones/forms, conferences, etc. especially if you need feedback/signatures, etc. and tell Fred in advance!