Additional Skills Course
On May 30th-31st, 2022, IMPRS hosted a workshop at MPL on ‘Project and Time Management for Scientists’ with Dr. Alexander Britz. Day one focused on self- and time management strategies where participants learned about and practiced techniques like the Eisenhower matrix, the Pareto principle, S.M.A.R.T. goal setting and performance curves. The second day was all about the project management of a PhD thesis or a research paper. Participants created a stakeholder map for their project and discussed strategies to reconcile expectations from different sides. Further, traditional project management techniques like Gantt charts, Kanban boards, SCRUM and agile project management were introduced and their advantages and disadvantages when applying them on science was discussed.
Dr. Britz is a physicist himself, he completed his PhD at XFEL in Hamburg and worked as a researcher at SLAC in Stanford for some time. Thus, he could relate very well to the challenges one faces during a PhD and could present the management tools in a way that was directly tailored to young researchers.
Thank you very much, Alex, for two inspiring days, we cannot wait to try out all the tools you showed us!
