Project Management for Researchers in the Natural and Life Sciences

Ziele

Project management was created more than 50 years ago to manage industry projects of great complexity, and was/is associated with production and utilization of series of graphs, charts, and procedures, often implemented through professional software solutions. However, project management has evolved over the years and today can be seen as a set of principles intended to provide a structured approach to making the everyday decisions that keep a project running. In a nutshell, managing a project effectively means thinking before acting, identifying and dealing with potential problems before they occur, and constantly monitoring to determine whether your actions are achieving their desired results.

In this comprehensive full-day workshop, you will learn the fundamentals of a project life cycle and principles of effective project management: how to initiate, plan, and execute a project that meets objectives, on time and within the budget. Project management competency development will be achieved through (i) interactive and hands-on workshop exercises, and (ii) subsequent one-on-one mentoring and monitoring of the successful implementation of the acquired knowledge into participant’s projects and working environment.

The benefits of this program are two-fold:
1) You will enrich your current work with new, challenging, and highly motivating tasks, which in turn will enhance your productivity and job satisfaction
2) You will develop highly valued transferable competency and enhance your professional portfolio, which will actively prepare you for your next professional step.

Kursinhalte

• Understand the importance of Project Management in any (business) project
• Clearly define project objectives (SMART), project deliverables and milestones
• Create a project Work Breakdown Structure
• Develop a manageable project schedule and budget
• Understand risk and contingency planning
• Manage project stakeholders and their expectations
• Learn to effectively communicate project performance
• Use tools and techniques to manage a project during execution
• Transfer the acquired knowledge to own working environment

Form

During the workshop the trainer will utilize short instructions, work on a case study, as well as discussion and feedback sessions to encourage new skill learning and topic understanding. Mentoring of participants and their skill development will be provided to all participants after the workshop as described above. Participants are required to bring only their notebooks/laptops for taking notes. The course material will be distributed as PDF files to all participants.

Adressatinnen und Adressaten

All doctoral Candidates of the Faculty of Science

Informationen zu den Dozierenden

Dr. Dimitrije Krstic is a freelance Researcher Developer, who organizes and delivers transferable skills workshops for research institutions in Switzerland. Dr. Krstic combines his extensive research experience in life sciences and in-depth understanding of HR development processes to provide fun, interactive, and informative learning experiences.

Dimitrije obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Zurich, and subsequently went through an intensive postdoctoral training in Switzerland and the USA. In parallel to his Masters studies in HR Management at Edinburgh Business School in UK, he worked for two years as a Scientific Talent Development Manager at an EU funded training project AREA.

Leistungsspektrum / Workload

Total of 31.5h
Preliminary work: 0.5 h
Workshop: 8 h
Follow up online course: 4x4h
Final practical exercise: 7 h

Besonderheiten

This course is reserved for doctoral candidates of the Faculy of Science.

Once registration is open, applications will be collected for 24 hours and course places allocated by lot. All registrations received after the initial 24h period will be put on a waiting list and assigned on a first come, first served basis.

Course places/places on the waiting list will be confirmed by e-mail. Course registrations can only be canceled before the registration period ends (send an e-mail to grace@unibas.ch). Full course attendance is mandatory. Participants who fail to attend a course without prior notification or withdraw after the registration deadline are subject to a fee of CHF 30. In addition, participants who cancel their course registration at a later point in time, are absent without an excuse or do not attend the entire course will, for reasons of fairness, not be considered for course registration in the following semester and will be removed from other courses offered in the same semester. Please find the detailed regulations on the Transferable Skills Homepage.