Human Practice

Management
——IGEM Efficiency Environment Enjoyment

During the entire iGEM project, we adhered to the four elements, iGEM, efficiency, environment and enjoyment. When the project is drawing to a close, we tease out our project management experience according to them and put it online for reference to more people.

iGEM

As our project is for participating in IGEM, we always emphasized the leading position of IGEM in our project. We set up study group specifically for IGEM project. Independent of the working group, they worked on synthetic biology. Although some of their results turned out to be useless, they played a critical role in every phase of our project, such as the decision of our final project, the refinement of functions of the software and teaching other team members not majoring in biology some biological knowledge. A group focusing on the subject guarantees that the whole project runs smoothly on track. The experience above applies to project of any subject. Just replace “IGEM” with your own word.

Efficiency

In any project, efficiency is always a significant factor. During our project, we took regular and necessary methods, such as wholesome team management system (team leader, team manager, group supervisor) and explicit regulations. In addition, we managed our team in an innovative way—electronic platform. All work plans are put on electronic notebook shared by all team members. We also built a platform for team members to report their working achievements periodically. Last but not least, we established a gitlab ourselves accessible to all team members, which avoided the detriment of environment caused by paper-based platform (this will be mentioned again later).

Environment

Environmental protection is one of the most compelling problems nowadays. We kept thinking about this issue while proceeding the project. Firstly, as mentioned above, we built a paperless office, except for necessary invoices. Compared with previous IGEM teams of USTC, we saved a lot of paper. Meanwhile, we paid attention to keeping our working environment neat and clean. The workplace was cleaned by our team members every day. Garbage was classified and dropped in the garbage bin. We believe that appropriate regulation can ensure that working group of any project can do their work comfortably and protect the earth at the same time.

Enjoyment

Although there were a lot of work to do, our project experience was joyful. At the beginning of the project, team members with experience in software development prepared courses for other members. Well-prepared courses made us accomplish the assignments and gain new knowledge. We also organized various kinds of activities to relax our team members. In the summer vacation, we had group activities after a whole day’s hard work, including having dinner outside, playing sports and even computer game competition. We also recommend these activities to every team. They not only relax team members, but also improve the relationship among team members, making the whole working experience enjoyable and unforgettable.

Examples with softwares

Google group

At the formation of USTC-Software of 2014, the team leader of 2013 recommended Google group as an online platform f or communication and team management. Although every team member was highly en thusiastic about iGEM, they had their own school work to worry about. Meanwhile, o ur team members lived in different areas of the campus. Hence it became a serious pr oblem that how team members could receive notices in time to accomplish the work separ ately while co-working time could not be guaranteed. Google group solved this problem gre atly. Google group offers open online platform to users and users can build heir own platform for sharing. Messages on the platform are accessible to al l users joining the group. Emails can also be pushed to users. We built a plat form of our team, and all messages on the platform could be pushed to team memb ers in time. By Google group, we were able to:
1.send notices and arrangements to all team members on time;
2.make team members share their thoughts and innovation conveniently;
3.Make regulations, assessments and finance transparent by sharing work logs.
We recommend Google group for project management based on our experience. It can enhance communication among team members by breaking through the limitations of time and space. It can also make team work transparent and increase management efficiency.

Wunderlist

Conversation sharing of Google group became inconvenient a s the project proceeded and our work became complicated. So we chose to use Wunderlist.
Wunderlist is specifically designed for work arrangement. People in charge can create lists for their part of work and invite other users to help them with the work. Specifically, they can assign different members for different work and set deadlines. Other members can give feedbacks to the list after the corresponding work is done, and people in charge can delete the work from the list. Another advantage of Wunderlist is that it is available for all platforms, including PC and mobile phones. This way, all team members could receive the latest work notices.
During the project, we created lists based on our work, including iGEM-backend, iGEM-frontend, iGEM-wiki and iGEM-finance, etc. Complicated assignments were distributed to different people. We also used the feedback service of Wunderlist to monitor the work progress. The use of Wunderlist enabled us to assign work in a scientific way and keep us informed of the progress of our project all the time to make sure that everything goes according to the plan.

OneNote

For every team, the financial problem is a big one. Of course, you m ay separate money and account, but how do you keep two or more financ ial managers in the same stage? We chose to solve the problem by OneNote.
OneNote is originally designed for instant creation and notes sharing, and s o it can be applied to financial management smoothly. We could create noteb ooks according to different items and mark the accounts that have been clea red or have not yet been cleared. By inviting others, the team leader ca n supervise the manager about he financial situation timely and make sure about the accuracy of this.

Omni outliner & Mindmap

No matter you are in what stage of what project, wh en you need new thoughts, it is always quite a hard time to get a satisfying result. Brainstorm might be a really n ice idea, but in most of the time you have to stare at a wh iteboard full of messy ideas on it and do nothing. To s olve the problem, you need some kind of software for thou ght assistance, such as Omni Outliner and Mingmap.
Software like Omni Outliner can help you sort out all t he necessary points and arrange your thoughts when you are writing articles, and software like Mindmap can enab le you to draw a succinct "map" of your ideas to clarify y our thoughts and summarize the viewpoints. Therefore you ca n quickly extract a wonderful idea from the numerous viewpo ints raised in the brainstorm.

Dropbox

During the project, all kinds of files were created unremittingly. To be specific, articles to read, work l og to be displayed, finished program codes, relevant materi als, photos taken for us, etc. How will you store the files? You don’t store all of them in only one person ’s computer, for they are too many and other people may also need them. We have a better solution—Dropbox.
Dropbox is a cloud storage platform. It allows users to store f iles in the cloud, and thus any team member, knowing the p assword of the account, has access to these files no matte r when and where. In the meantime, cloud storage is also ver y secure. Even if you accidentally spill coffee on your comp uter or in the manuscript, you can still keep your files safe.

Innovation Experiment Centre of Life Science (IEC)

Building of Life Sciences, Room 363

University of Science and Technology of China

96, Jinzhai Rd, Shushan, Hefei

230026, Anhui, China

ustc-software-2014@googlegroups.com

University of Science and Technology of China

© 2014 USTC-Software,University of Science and Technology of China. All rights reserved.

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