Project Management

Working as a academic also means that you need strong project management skills. Everone works differently, so there is no one-size-fits-all solution. We do share some general tips here, and also asked each colleague to share how they keep their projects organized. Pick out the things that work for you, and be invited to share how you manage your system when it works!

Our strategies

• Maarten → PARA + Weekly review

We also made a list of tools that support project organization.

General tips

Something everybody has to deal with is project organisation and management. Below we share some tips on folder structures to make sure you do not end up with a folder monster after a year. Important to note that everyone works differently, so pick out the things that work for you. We are also looking forward to new ways of working, so feel free to share your ways on Slack!

Folder structure

We recommend to use a seperate folder per project, and contain everything within this folder. Strictly so, that when you share the complete folder with someone else, that he/she can immideately to this. This means that, aside from all the relevant files, the folder should also have its own programming environment (like conda for python). Dependencies should also point to each other relatively, so (in python) instead of using an absolute path (C:/users/projects/project_1/data/your_data_file.xdf) use a relative path: ../data/your_data_file.xdf. Doing this will make sure that the code works wherever you move it to. Note that you should only save processed data on your personal computer, see Data management and Security. All files you save should also be in this project folder, such as figures and results. Combining this, we recommend the following structure to start with:

• Projects
  • Project_1
    • data
    • figures
    • results
    • documents
    • code
  • Project_2
    • ...

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General tips

The inbox folder - Sometimes, you're short on time, or occupied with something else than data organisation. To prevent either a cluttered computer or you getting distracted, you can create or dedicate an inbox folder. If you are not sure where to save a specific document right this moment, throw it in your inbox folder. That way you can continue your work without getting distracted. Make sure to have a weekly moment to organise your inboxes.

The archive folder - After a while, you will have some projects that are currently not progressing, but might still be important in the future. To prevent your folders getting cluttered with irrelevant files, you can create an archive folder in any folder you are working in. Any files that are not important right now, but might be useful later can be moved there. In that case, you keep the overview to the currently relevant files, and still be able to retrieve older files later on.