
Project Management for PhDs - rachitnigam
https://rachitnigam.com/post/project-management/
======
blastbeat
The title of this article should rather be "How I approach project management
as a PhD student in a computer science research group". In my experience,
there is no silver bullet for PhD projects. It really depends on the field,
the advisor and the student.

~~~
salty_biscuits
My strategy was to have a kid. Really lights a fire under you and motivates
you to finish before you rapidly go broke.

~~~
chrisseaton
Do they have deadlines in the US?

I've heard about US PhD students going on for seven years, ten years, fourteen
years, and so on.

In the UK I had to submit before four years. If I didn't do that I literally
just failed the degree.

I worked twenty-hour days for about a month at the end and then submitted with
one day to go. Not even exaggerating.

~~~
hyperpallium
Brian May, started 1970, submitted 2007.
[https://ewikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May#Scientific_career](https://ewikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May#Scientific_career)

They may have made an exception.

~~~
ltratt
The hard time limit on UK PhDs is a recent-ish thing, which started coming in
around 2010ish from memory (as is usual with such things, there was a fairly
long phase-in, which messes with my memory). Broadly speaking, anyone who
started in the old system could still carry on for as long as they wanted.

[It's also possible to "suspend regulations" \-- which is University speak for
"something happened which the rules don't deal with sensibly" \-- and extend a
PhD's length, though this is generally accompanied by weeping and gnashing of
teeth by administrators. It's much harder to do than it used to be.]

------
closed
This is really helpful article, and I think the concrete questions they lay
out are ones all PhDs should answer explicitly when starting a new project.

That said, I think the biggest risk to PhD research is not just project, but
product management. That is, many PhDs will set up meetings, TODOs, and
communication channels, but they won't explicate...

* why the project is being done

* an ordered list of desired outcomes

* acceptance criteria

* who they'll communicate with, how, and how often

* some kind of list of risks

Not locking down acceptance criteria with an adviser is, IMO, the biggest
thing that keeps people from graduating (and is generally what a dissertation
proposal is for).

~~~
rachitnigam
Author here. Acceptance criteria are hard to lock down, especially in new
projects. The whole point of research is to explore domains and to expect a
lot of dead ends.

I’m unsure what a concrete acceptance criteria will look like given that we
want to encourage researchers to explore.

~~~
blastbeat
Acceptance criteria in the CS department of my alma mater is on a scale of 3-4
peer peer-reviewed papers, accepted in some journals. I would also be careful
about what the point of research might be. The most important purpose of a PhD
student is to produce a thesis in a foreseeable future, to qualify himself for
scientific work. The success of the thesis depends on the advisor(s), and
later the department and the reviewers. Thus, it's important to choose a
topic, which is NOT an ultimate dead end. Even if your topic leads to a
successful thesis, it might be a dead end later on. Because your advisor has
no network, or because nobody is interested in your results etc. And even if
you can continue with research, you are rather occupied with fund raising,
networking and marketing. If I had to do a PhD again, I would try to figure
out as fast as possible what is expected to do in the specific configuration
I'm in, and then try to minimize all obstacles and distractions which might be
in the way (teaching, assistance for the prof, fund raising, conferences etc).
After that, if your're are lucky, you have 1-2 years left to write down your
stuff.

------
KineticLensman
I think PhD project management should explicitly tie everything back to the
actual research goals, so that effort can be justified / prioritised against
these.

Source: I didn't achieve a PhD (I bailed early with an M.Phil) because our
group project devolved into a poorly structured software development that
contained numerous software rabbit holes. Once we'd gone down these, we never
converged on a useful research output, as opposed to a massive codebase. That
said, with the tools described here, our codebase would have been cleaner.

------
bachmeier
This says "for PhDs" but then I found that it's more geared at PhD students
working in research groups. A different type of PhD is the tenured professor
who has to deal with a large number of projects at the same time. There's
research, but there's also teaching, service projects, reviewing/editing,
students asking for letters, and dozens of other things. At that scale, it's
tough, and I still haven't found a complete solution. I use Todoist, email,
Basecamp, version control (Fossil) and a few open source apps/apps I've
written myself. I spend about 60 minutes on project management each day -
that's organizing projects, not working on them.

~~~
phalangion
And it's not just research, but several different research projects in various
stages. I would feel lucky (but also a bit panicky) if I had just one research
project to worry about at a time. It's extremely hard to stay organized and
focused at the same time.

------
systemBuilder
My school required 16 credits to graduate with a PhD. Also, MS and of course,
PhD theses. I worked on an MS in dataflow distributed system security for 1
year before my advisor bailed out on the topic. No credits for thesis work,
2.5 classes per term for 3 years. 3 accepted journal papers is the standard
graduation yardstick. Under these circumstances it was impossible to finish in
4.5 years (brilliant + lucky) or 5 years (very smart) I guess I made the
mistake of sleeping (6.5yrs). My dad did it in 3 years but he went to a #1
school that wasn't insecure (Princeton, math) so not so many damned courses.

------
dugluak
> Chat apps, on the other hand, make it really quick and easy to communicate
> with the team but are usually bad at maintaining separate threads of
> conversations cleanly.

I disagree with the author. Most modern chat applications like Slack,
Microsoft Teams, Skype etc allow separate threads of conversation cleanly.

IMO email is the worst platform for having conversations about a project.

~~~
rachitnigam
Author here. I do recognize that slack has thread by that doesn’t make it easy
to refer to an exact thread like email does.

I’m looking for something like a “named thread” which the Twist Chat app has,
but is unfortunately not the preferred means of communication in my group.

------
ams6110
Hire a project manager for your lab.

~~~
chrisseaton
I think a big part of doing a PhD is managing your own research.

~~~
ams6110
Yeah, since the article specifically is titled project management not
research, I assumed this was about project management for people who already
have their PhD, i.e. are working as faculty or in a research lab. And in that
environment, there are definitely project managers employed. Managing your own
research is one thing -- managing projects, grant applications, dealing with
institutional and funding agency paperwork are all things that most PhDs would
absolutely flounder at.

Should have read more closely.

