AMANDA (Windows, OS X, Linux)
A Glossary of Special Terms
Term | Meaning |
---|---|
EPUB | A standardized format for digital books. |
FTP | FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It is a protocol used to transfer files from one computer to another via a wired or wireless network. |
Gantt chart | A type of bar chart used for project schedules, in which the tasks to be completed are shown as bars on the vertical axis, and time is shown on the horizontal axis, with the width of a given bar indicating the length of a given task. This facilitates planning by automating the tracking of milestone schedules and dependencies. |
GTD | GTD stands for Getting Things Done. It is a productivity method created by productivity consultant David Allen that allows users to focus on those tasks that should be addressed in a given context and at the right timescale of planning, from current activities to life-long goals. |
IP | IP stands for Intellectual Property, such as inventions and work products that are often patented or copyrighted. |
Linux | Linux is a family of open-source operating systems created by Linus Torvalds in 1991, serving as an alternative to the commercial ones. |
MTA | MTA stands for Materials Transfer Agreement—contracts that govern the transfer of research materials (e.g., DNA plasmids, cell lines) across institutions. |
MySQL | MySQL is an open-source database management system, consisting of a server back end that houses the data and a front end that allows users to query the database in very flexible ways. |
OCR | OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition—a process by which text is automatically recognized in an image, for example, converting a FAX or photo of a document into an editable text file. |
PDF stands for Portable Document Format, which serves as a standard format for many different types of devices and operating systems to be able to display (and sometimes edit) documents. | |
PMID | PMID stands for PubMed ID—the unique identifier used in the PubMed database to refer to published papers. |
SFTP | SFTP stands for SSH File Transfer Protocol but is often also referred to as Secure File Transfer Protocol. Its purpose is to transfer data over a network, similarly to FTP, but with added security (encryption). |
SSH | SSH stands for Secure Shell. This allows a remote user to connect to the operating system of their computer via a terminal-like interface. |
SSD | SSD stands for Solid State Drive. An SSD is a type of storage device for a computer that uses flash memory instead of a spinning disk, as in a typical hard drive. Compared with spinning hard drives, these are smaller, require less power, generate less heat, are less likely to break during routine use, and, crucially, enable vastly faster read and write speeds. |
TB | TB stands for Terabyte—a unit of measuring file size on a computer. One terabyte is equivalent to one thousand gigabytes, one million megabytes, or one trillion bytes. |
VNC | VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing—a desktop sharing system that transmits video signal and commands from one computer to another, allowing a user to interact with a remote computer the same way as if it were the computer they were currently using. |
VPN | VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. A virtual private network allows connections to internet-based resources with high security (encryption of data). |
WYSIWYG | WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get. This refers to applications where the output of text or other data being edited appears the same on-screen as it will when it is a finished project, such as a sheet of paper with formatted text (Microsoft Word and Scrivener are such, whereas LaTeX is not). |
Windows | Windows refers to the operating system Microsoft Windows. It is one of the most common operating systems in use today and is compatible with the vast majority of applications and hardware. |
XML | XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. Extensible Markup Language is a markup language used to encode documents such that they are readable by both humans and a variety of software. |
Although there is a huge variety of different types of scientific enterprises, most of them contain one or more activities that can be roughly subsumed by the conceptual progression shown in Figure 1 . This life cycle progresses from brainstorming and ideation through planning, execution of research, and then creation of work products. Each stage requires unique activities and tools, and it is crucial to establish a pipeline and best practices that enable the results of each phase to effectively facilitate the next phase. All of the recommendations given below are designed to support the following basic principles:
The Life Cycle of Research Activity
Various projects occupy different places along a typical timeline. The life cycle extends from creative ideation to gathering information, to formulating a plan, to the execution for the plan, and then to producing a work product such as a grant or paper based on the results. Many of these phases necessitate feedback to a prior phase, shown in thinner arrows (for example, information discovered during a literature search or attempts to formalize the work plan may require novel brainstorming). This diagram shows the product (end result) of each phase and typical tools used to accomplish them.
These basic principles can be used as the skeleton around which specific strategies and new software products can be deployed. Whenever possible, these can be implemented via external administration services (i.e., by a dedicated project manager or administrator inside the group), but this is not always compatible with budgetary constraints, in which case they can readily be deployed by each principal investigator. The PIs also have to decide whether they plan to suggest (or insist) that other people in the group also use these strategies, and perhaps monitor their execution. In our experience, it is most essential for anyone leading a complex project or several to adopt these methods (typically, a faculty member or senior staff scientist), whereas people tightly focused on one project and with limited concurrent tasks involving others (e.g., Ph.D. students) are not essential to move toward the entire system (although, for example, the backup systems should absolutely be ensured to be implemented among all knowledge workers in the group). The following are some of the methods that have proven most effective in our own experience.
Several key elements should be pillars of your Information Technology (IT) infrastructure ( Figure 2 ). You should be familiar enough with computer technology that you can implement these yourself, as it is rare for an institutional IT department to be able to offer this level of assistance. Your primary disk should be a large (currently, ∼2TB) SSD drive or, better, a disk card (such as the 2TB SSD NVMe PCIe) for fast access and minimal waiting time. Your computer should be so fast that you spend no time (except in the case of calculations or data processing) waiting for anything—your typing and mouse movement should be the rate-limiting step. If you find yourself waiting for windows or files to open, obtain a better machine.
Schematic of Data Flow and Storage
Three types of information: data (facts and datasets), action plans (schedules and to-do lists), and work product (documents) all interact with each other in defining a region of work space for a given research project. All of this should be hosted on a single PC (personal computer). It is accessed by a set of regular backups of several types, as well as by the user who can interact with raw files through the file system or with organized data through a variety of client applications that organize information, schedules, and email. See Table 2 for definitions of special terms.
One key element is backups—redundant copies of your data. Disks fail—it is not a question of whether your laptop or hard drive will die, but when. Storage space is inexpensive and researchers' time is precious: team members should not tolerate time lost due to computer snafus. The backup and accessibility system should be such that data are immediately recoverable following any sort of disaster; it only has to be set up once, and it only takes one disaster to realize the value of paranoia about data. This extends also to laboratory inventory systems—it is useful to keep (and back up) lists of significant equipment and reagents in the laboratory, in case they are needed for the insurance process in case of loss or damage.
The main drive should be big enough to keep all key information (not primary laboratory data, such as images or video) in one volume—this is to facilitate cloning. You should have an extra internal drive (which can be a regular disk) of the same size or bigger. Use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to set up a nightly clone operation. When the main disk fails (e.g., the night before a big grant is due), boot from the clone and your exact, functioning system is ready to go. For Macs, another internal drive set up as a Time Machine enables keeping versions of files as they change. You should also have an external drive, which is likewise a Time Machine or a clone: you can quickly unplug it and take it with you, if the laboratory has to be evacuated (fire alarm or chemical emergency) or if something happens to your computer and you need to use one elsewhere. Set a calendar reminder once a month to check that the Time Machine is accessible and can be searched and that your clone is actually updated and bootable. A Passport-type portable drive is ideal when traveling to conferences: if something happens to the laptop, you can boot a fresh (or borrowed) machine from the portable drive and continue working. For people who routinely install software or operating system updates, I also recommend getting one disk that is a clone of the entire system and applications and then set it to nightly clone the data only , leaving the operating system files unchanged. This guarantees that you have a usable system with the latest data files (useful in case an update or a new piece of software renders the system unstable or unbootable and it overwrites the regular clone before you notice the problem). Consider off-site storage. CrashPlan Pro is a reasonable choice for backing up laboratory data to the cloud. One solution for a single person's digital content is to have two extra external hard drives. One gets a clone of your office computer, and one is a clone of your home computer, and then you swap—bring the office one home and the home one to your office. Update them regularly, and keep them swapped, so that should a disaster strike one location, all of the data are available. Finally, pay careful attention (via timed reminders) to how your laboratory machines and your people's machines are being backed up; a lot of young researchers, especially those who have not been through a disaster yet, do not make backups. One solution is to have a system like CrashPlan Pro installed on everyone's machines to do automatic backup.
Another key element is accessibility of information. Everyone should be working on files (i.e., Microsoft Word documents) that are inside a Dropbox or Box folder; whatever you are working on this month, the files should be inside a folder synchronized by one of these services. That way, if anything happens to your machine, you can access your files from anywhere in the world. It is critical that whatever service is chosen, it is one that s ynchronizes a local copy of the data that live on your local machine (not simply keeps files in the cloud) —that way, you have what you need even if the internet is down or connectivity is poor. Tools that help connect to your resources while on the road include a VPN (especially useful for secure connections while traveling), SFTP (to transfer files; turn on the SFTP, not FTP, service on your office machine), and Remote Desktop (or VNC). All of these exist for cell phone or tablet devices, as well as for laptops, enabling access to anything from anywhere. All files (including scans of paper documents) should be processed by OCR (optical character recognition) software to render their contents searchable. This can be done in batch (on a schedule), by Adobe Acrobat's OCR function, which can be pointed to an entire folder of PDFs, for example, and left to run overnight. The result, especially with Apple's Spotlight feature, is that one can easily retrieve information that might be written inside a scanned document.
Here, we focus on work product and the thought process, not management of the raw data as it emerges from equipment and experimental apparatus. However, mention should be made of electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs), which are becoming an important aspect of research. ELNs are a rapidly developing field, because they face a number of challenges. A laboratory that abandons paper notebooks entirely has to provide computer interfaces anywhere in the facility where data might be generated; having screens, keyboards, and mice at every microscope or other apparatus station, for example, can be expensive, and it is not trivial to find an ergonomically equivalent digital substitute for writing things down in a notebook as ideas or data appear. On the other hand, keeping both paper notebooks for immediate recording, and ELNs for organized official storage, raises problems of wasted effort during the (perhaps incomplete) transfer of information from paper to the digital version. ELNs are also an essential tool to prevent loss of institutional knowledge as team members move up to independent positions. ELN usage will evolve over time as input devices improve and best practices are developed to minimize the overhead of entering meta-data. However, regardless of how primary data are acquired, the researcher will need specific strategies for transitioning experimental findings into research product in the context of a complex set of personal, institutional, and scientific goals and constraints.
The pipeline begins with ideas, which must be cultivated and then harnessed for subsequent implementation ( Altshuller, 1984 ). This step consists of two components: identifying salient new information and arranging it in a way that facilitates novel ideas, associations, hypotheses, and strategic plans for making impact.
For the first step, we suggest an automated weekly PubCrawler search, which allows Boolean searches of the literature. Good searches to save include ones focusing on specific keywords of interest, as well as names of specific people whose work one wants to follow. The resulting weekly email of new papers matching specific criteria complements manual searches done via ISI's Web of Science, Google Scholar, and PubMed. The papers of interest should be immediately imported into a reference manager, such as Endnote, along with useful Keywords and text in the Notes field of each one that will facilitate locating them later. Additional tools include DevonAgent and DevonSphere, which enable smart searches of web and local resources, respectively.
Brainstorming can take place on paper or digitally (see later discussion). We have noticed that the rate of influx of new ideas is increased by habituating to never losing a new idea. This can be accomplished by establishing a voicemail contact in your cell phone leading to your own office voicemail (which allows voice recordings of idea fragments while driving or on the road, hands-free) and/or setting up Endnote or a similar server-synchronized application to record (and ideally transcribe) notes. It has been our experience that the more one records ideas arising in a non-work setting, the more often they will pop up automatically. For notes or schematics written on paper during dedicated brainstorming, one tool that ensures that nothing is lost is an electronic pen. For example, the Livescribe products are well integrated with Evernote and ensure that no matter where you are, anything you write down becomes captured in a form accessible from anywhere and are safe no matter what happens to the original notebook in which they were written.
Enhancing scientific thought, creative brainstorming, and strategic planning is facilitated by the creation of mind maps: visual representations of spatial structure of links between concepts, or the mapping of planned activity onto goals of different timescales. There are many available mind map software packages, including MindNode; their goal is to enable one to quickly set down relationships between concepts with a minimum of time spent on formatting. Examples are shown in Figures 3 A and 3B. The process of creating these mind maps (which can then be put on one's website or discussed with the laboratory members) helps refine fuzzy thinking and clarifies the relationships between concepts or activities. Mind mappers are an excellent tool because their light, freeform nature allows unimpeded brainstorming and fluid changes of idea structure but at the same time forces one to explicitly test out specific arrangements of plans or ideas.
Mind Mapping
(A and B) The task of schematizing concepts and ideas spatially based on their hierarchical relationships with each other is a powerful technique for organizing the creative thought process. Examples include (A), which shows how the different projects in our laboratory relate to each other. Importantly, it can also reveal disbalances or gaps in coverage of specific topics, as well as help identify novel relationships between sub-projects by placing them on axes (B) or even identify novel hypotheses suggested by symmetry.
(C) Relationships between the central nervous system (CNS) and regeneration, cancer, and embryogenesis. The connecting lines in black show typical projects (relationships) already being pursued by our laboratory, and the lack of a project in the space between CNS and embryogenesis suggests a straightforward hypothesis and project to examine the role of the brain in embryonic patterning.
It is important to note that mind maps can serve a function beyond explicit organization. In a good mapped structure, one can look for symmetries (revealing relationships that are otherwise not obvious) between the concepts involved. An obvious geometric pattern with a missing link or node can help one think about what could possibly go there, and often identifies new relationships or items that had not been considered ( Figure 3 C), in much the same way that gaps in the periodic table of the elements helped identify novel elements.
The input and output of the feedback process between brainstorming and literature mining is information. Static information not only consists of the facts, images, documents, and other material needed to support a train of thought but also includes anything needed to support the various projects and activities. It should be accessible in three ways, as it will be active during all phases of the work cycle. Files should be arranged on your disk in a logical hierarchical structure appropriate to the work. Everything should also be searchable and indexed by Spotlight. Finally, some information should be stored as entries in a data management system, like Evernote or DevonThink, which have convenient client applications that make the data accessible from any device.
Notes in these systems should include useful lists and how-to's, including, for example:
Each note can have attachments, which include manuals, materials safety sheets, etc. DevonThink needs a little more setup but is more robust and also allows keeping the server on one's own machine (nothing gets uploaded to company servers, unlike with Evernote, which might be a factor for sensitive data). Scientific papers should be kept in a reference manager, whereas books (such as epub files and PDFs of books and manuscripts) can be stored in a Calibre library.
A special case of static information is email, including especially informative and/or actionable emails from team members, external collaborators, reviewers, and funders. Because the influx of email is ever-increasing, it is important to (1) establish a good infrastructure for its management and (2) establish policies for responding to emails and using them to facilitate research. The first step is to ensure that one only sees useful emails, by training a good Bayesian spam filter such as SpamSieve. We suggest a triage system in which, at specific times of day (so that it does not interfere with other work), the Inbox is checked and each email is (1) forwarded to someone better suited to handling it, (2) responded quickly for urgent things that need a simple answer, or (3) started as a Draft email for those that require a thoughtful reply. Once a day or a couple of times per week, when circumstances permit focused thought, the Draft folder should be revisited and those emails answered. We suggest a “0 Inbox” policy whereby at the end of a day, the Inbox is basically empty, with everything either delegated, answered, or set to answer later.
We also suggest creating subfolders in the main account (keeping them on the mail server, not local to a computer, so that they can be searched and accessed from anywhere) as follows:
Incoming emails belonging to those categories (for example, an email from an NIH program officer acknowledging a grant submission, a collaborator who emailed a plan of what they will do next, or someone who promised to answer a specific question) should be sorted from the Inbox to the relevant folder. Every couple of weeks (according to a calendar reminder), those folders should be checked, and those items that have since been dealt with can be saved to a Saved Messages folder archive, whereas those that remain can be Replied to as a reminder to prod the relevant person.
In addition, as most researchers now exchange a lot of information via email, the email trail preserves a record of relationships among colleagues and collaborators. It can be extremely useful, even years later, to be able to go back and see who said what to whom, what was the last conversation in a collaboration that stalled, who sent that special protocol or reagent and needs to be acknowledged, etc. It is imperative that you know where your email is being stored, by whom, and their policy on retention, storage space limits, search, backup, etc. Most university IT departments keep a mail server with limited storage space and will delete your old emails (even more so if you move institutions). One way to keep a permanent record with complete control is with an application called MailSteward Pro. This is a front-end client for a freely available MySQL server, which can run on any machine in your laboratory. It will import your mail and store unlimited quantities indefinitely. Unlike a mail server, this is a real database system and is not as susceptible to data corruption or loss as many other methods.
A suggested strategy is as follows. Keep every single email, sent and received. Every month (set a timed reminder), have MailSteward Pro import them into the MySQL database. Once a year, prune them from the mail server (or let IT do it on their own schedule). This allows rapid search (and then reply) from inside a mail client for anything that is less than one year old (most searches), but anything older can be found in the very versatile MailStewardPro Boolean search function. Over time, in addition to finding specific emails, this allows some informative data mining. Results of searches via MailStewardPro can be imported into Excel to, for example, identify the people with whom you most frequently communicate or make histograms of the frequency of specific keywords as a function of time throughout your career.
With ideas, mind maps, and the necessary information in hand, one can consider what aspects of the current operations plan can be changed to incorporate plans for new, impactful activity.
A very useful strategy involves breaking down everything according to the timescales of decision-making, such as in the Getting Things Done (GTD) philosophy ( Figure 4 ) ( Allen, 2015 ). Activities range from immediate (daily) tasks to intermediate goals all the way to career-scale (or life-long) mission statements. As with mind maps, being explicit about these categories not only force one to think hard about important aspects of their work, but also facilitate the transmission of this information to others on the team. The different categories are to be revisited and revised at different rates, according to their position on the hierarchy. This enables you to make sure that effort and resources are being spent according to priorities.
Scales of Activity Planning
Activities should be assigned to a level of planning with a temporal scale, based on how often the goals of that level get re-evaluated. This ranges from core values, which can span an entire career or lifetime, all the way to tactics that guide day-to-day activities. Each level should be re-evaluated at a reasonable time frame to ensure that its goals are still consistent with the bigger picture of the level(s) above it and to help re-define the plans for the levels below it.
We also strongly recommend a yearly personal scientific retreat. This is not meant to be a vacation to “forget about work” but rather an opportunity for freedom from everyday minutiae to revisit, evaluate, and potentially revise future activity (priorities, action items) for the next few years. Every few years, take more time to re-map even higher levels on the pyramid hierarchy; consider what the group has been doing—do you like the intellectual space your group now occupies? Are your efforts having the kind of impact you realistically want to make? A formal diagram helps clarify the conceptual vision and identify gaps and opportunities. Once a correct level of activity has been identified, it is time to plan specific activities.
A very good tool for this purpose, which enables hierarchical storage of tasks and subtasks and their scheduling, is OmniFocus ( Figure 5 ). OmniFocus also enables inclusion of files (or links to files or links to Evernote notes of information) together with each Action. It additionally allows each action to be marked as “Done” once it is complete, providing not only a current action plan but a history of every past activity. Another interesting aspect is the fact that one can link individual actions with specific contexts: visualizing the database from the perspective of contexts enables efficient focus of attention on those tasks that are relevant in a specific scenario. OmniFocus allows setting reminders for specific actions and can be used for adding a time component to the activity.
Project Planning
This figure shows a screenshot of the OmniFocus application, illustrating the nested hierarchy of projects and sub-projects, arranged into larger groups.
The best way to manage time relative to activity (and to manage the people responsible for each activity) is to construct Gantt charts ( Figure 6 ), which can be used to plan out project timelines and help keep grant and contract deliverables on time. A critical feature is that it makes dependencies explicit, so that it is clear which items have to be solved/done before something else can be accomplished. Gantt charts are essential for complex, multi-person, and/or multi-step projects with strict deadlines (such as grant deliverables and progress reports). Software such as OmniPlanner can also be used to link resources (equipment, consumables, living material, etc.) with specific actions and timelines. Updating and evaluation of a Gantt chart for a specific project should take place on a time frame appropriate to the length of the next immediate phase; weekly or biweekly is typical.
Timeline Planning
This figure shows a screenshot of a typical Gantt chart, in OmniPlan software, illustrating the timelines of different project steps, their dependencies, and specific milestones (such as a due date for a site visit or grant submission). Note that Gantt software automatically moves the end date for each item if its subtasks' timing changes, enabling one to see a dynamically correct up-to-date temporal map of the project that adjusts for the real-world contingencies of research.
In addition to the comprehensive work plan in OmniFocus or similar, it is helpful to use a Calendar (which synchronizes to a server, such as Microsoft Office calendar with Exchange server). For yourself, make a task every day called “Monday tasks,” etc., which contains all the individual things to be accomplished (which do not warrant their own calendar reminder). First thing in the morning, one can take a look at the day's tasks to see what needs to be done. Whatever does not get done that day is to be copied onto another day's tasks. For each of the people on your team, make a timed reminder (weekly, for example, for those with whom you meet once a week) containing the immediate next steps for them to do and the next thing they are supposed to produce for your meeting. Have it with you when you meet, and give them a copy, updating the next occurrence as needed based on what was decided at the meeting to do next. This scheme makes it easy for you to remember precisely what needs to be covered in the discussion, serves as a record of the project and what you walked about with whom at any given day (which can be consulted years later, to reconstruct events if needed), and is useful to synchronize everyone on the same page (if the team member gets a copy of it after the meeting).
Writing, to disseminate results and analysis, is a central activity for scientists. One of the OmniFocus library's sections should contain lists of upcoming grants to write, primary papers that are being worked on, and reviews/hypothesis papers planned. Microsoft Word is the most popular tool for writing papers—its major advantage is compatibility with others, for collaborative manuscripts (its Track Changes feature is also very well implemented, enabling collaboration as a master document is passed from one co-author to another). But Scrivener should be seriously considered—it is an excellent tool that facilitates complex projects and documents because it enables WYSIWYG text editing in the context of a hierarchical structure, which allows you to simultaneously work on a detailed piece of text while seeing the whole outline of the project ( Figure 7 ).
Writing Complex Materials
This figure shows a screenshot from the Scrivener software. The panel on the left facilitates logical and hierarchical organization of a complex writing project (by showing where in the overall structure any given text would fit), while the editing pane on the right allows the user to focus on writing a specific subsection without having to scroll through (but still being able to see) the major categories within which it must fit.
It is critical to learn to use a reference manager—there are numerous ones, including, for example, Endnote, which will make it much easier to collaborate with others on papers with many citations. One specific tip to make collaboration easier is to ask all of the co-authors to set the reference manager to use PMID Accession Number in the temporary citations in the text instead of the arbitrary record number it uses by default. That way, a document can have its bibliography formatted by any of the co-authors even if they have completely different libraries. Although some prefer collaborative editing of a Google Doc file, we have found a “master document” system useful, in which a file is passed around among collaborators by email but only one can make (Tracked) edits at a time (i.e., one person has the master doc and everyone makes edits on top of that).
One task most scientists regularly undertake is writing reviews of a specific subfield (or Whitepapers). It is often difficult, when one has an assignment to write, to remember all of the important papers that were seen in the last few years that bear on the topic. One method to remedy this is to keep standing document files, one for each topic that one might plausibly want to cover and update them regularly. Whenever a good paper is found, immediately enter it into the reference manager (with good keywords) and put a sentence or two about its main point (with the citation) into the relevant document. Whenever you decide to write the review, you will already have a file with the necessary material that only remains to be organized, allowing you to focus on conceptual integration and not combing through literature.
The life cycle of research can be viewed through the lens of the tools used at different stages. First there are the conceptual ideas; many are interconnected, and a mind mapper is used to flesh out the structure of ideas, topics, and concepts; make it explicit; and share it within the team and with external collaborators. Then there is the knowledge—facts, data, documents, protocols, pieces of information that relate to the various concepts. Kept in a combination of Endnote (for papers), Evernote (for information fragments and lists), and file system files (for documents), everything is linked and cross-referenced to facilitate the projects. Activities are action items, based on the mind map, of what to do, who is doing what, and for which purpose/grant. OmniFocus stores the subtasks within tasks within goals for the PI and everyone in the laboratory. During meetings with team members, these lists and calendar entries are used to synchronize objectives with everyone and keep the activity optimized toward the next step goals. The product—discovery and synthesis—is embodied in publications via a word processor and reference manager. A calendar structure is used to manage the trajectory from idea to publication or grant.
The tools are currently good enough to enable individual components in this pipeline. Because new tools are continuously developed and improved, we recommend a yearly overview and analysis of how well the tools are working (e.g., which component of the management plan takes the most time or is the most difficult to make invisible relative to the actual thinking and writing), coupled to a web search for new software and updated versions of existing programs within each of the categories discussed earlier.
A major opportunity exists for software companies in the creation of integrated new tools that provide all the tools in a single integrated system. In future years, a single platform will surely appear that will enable the user to visualize the same research structure from the perspective of an idea mind map, a schedule, a list of action items, or a knowledge system to be queried. Subsequent development may even include Artificial Intelligence tools for knowledge mining, to help the researcher extract novel relationships among the content. These will also need to dovetail with ELN platforms, to enable a more seamless integration of project management with primary data. These may eventually become part of the suite of tools being developed for improving larger group dynamics (e.g., Microsoft Teams). One challenge in such endeavors is ensuring the compatibility of formats and management procedures across groups and collaborators, which can be mitigated by explicitly discussing choice of software and process, at the beginning of any serious collaboration.
Regardless of the specific software products used, a researcher needs to put systems in place for managing information, plans, schedules, and work products. These digital objects need to be maximally accessible and backed up, to optimize productivity. A core principle is to have these systems be so robust and lightweight as to serve as an “external brain” ( Menary, 2010 )—to maximize creativity and deep thought by making sure all the details are recorded and available when needed. Although the above discussion focused on the needs of a single researcher (perhaps running a team), future work will address the unique needs of collaborative projects with more lateral interactions by significant numbers of participants.
We thank Joshua Finkelstein for helpful comments on a draft of the manuscript. M.L. gratefully acknowledges support by an Allen Discovery Center award from the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group (12171) and the Barton Family Foundation.
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“A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis).” -- Purdue OWL
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1. Purdue Owl gives this example using APA.
2. And here is a paper within research gate that has a literature review section in IEEE (you just need to see the lit review as an example).
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Strategic digital city: multiple projects for sustainable urban management.
2. literature review and background, 2.1. strategic digital city (sdc) concept and model, 2.2. strategic digital city (sdc) background, 2.3. sustainability, 2.4. strategic digital city and sustainability relationship, 3. materials and methods, 4. sdc multiple projects, 5. discussion, 6. conclusions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.
Year-Author | General Theme | Main Construct(s) | Addressed SDC Subprojects | Territory |
---|---|---|---|---|
2012-[ ] | City government municipal government performance management | Decision-making and planning | Strategies | Rio de Janeiro |
Operational management | Information | Porto Alegre | ||
Political management | Public Services | Curitiba | ||
Strategic projects management | IT | Florianópolis | ||
2014-[ ] | Participatory budgeting | Opening | Strategies | Belo Horizonte |
Deliberation | Information | |||
Evaluation | Public Services | |||
Execution | IT | |||
Follow-up | ||||
Strategic projects management | ||||
2015-[ ] | Public accounts model | Public account models | Strategies | Multiple |
Public account transparency | Information | |||
Social control | Public Services | |||
International public account models | IT | |||
Strategic projects management | ||||
2015-[ ] | Basic sanitation management | Water | Strategies | Curitiba (RMC) |
Sewage | Information | |||
Waste | Public Services | |||
Drainage | IT | |||
Citizens | ||||
City management | ||||
Strategic projects management | ||||
2017-[ ] | Public management intersectoral analysis | Management and Planning | Strategies | Curitiba |
Social participation process | Information | |||
Strategic projects management | Public Services | |||
IT | ||||
2018-[ ] | Informational management | Multidimensional information | Strategies | Regina (Canada) |
Public services | Information | Rio de Janeiro | ||
Strategic projects management | Public Services | |||
IT | ||||
2018-[ ] | Decision-making process | Decision-making | Strategies | Reserva do Iguaçu |
Evidence | Information | Guarapuava | ||
Strategic projects management | Public Services | |||
IT | ||||
2020-[ ] | Public intelligence model | Public intelligence (PI) | Strategies | Curitiba |
Intelligence assessment agent (IAA) | Information | |||
Strategic projects management | Public Services | |||
IT | ||||
2021-[ ] | Crowdsourcing model | E-participation | Strategies | Curitiba |
Crowdsourcing | Information | |||
Strategic projects management | Public Services | |||
IT | ||||
2022-[ ] | Connected public services provision | Connected city services | Strategies | São José dos Pinhais |
IoT | Information | |||
Strategic projects management | Public Services | |||
IT | ||||
2023-[ ] | Access model for urban workers | Urban worker | Strategies | Guaratuba |
Migrant worker | Information | Curitiba | ||
Disabled worker | Public Services | |||
Public infrastructure | IT |
Year-Author | Economical | Social | Political | Ecological | Environmental | Territorial (Local) | Territorial (International) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2012-[ ] | X | X | X | X | X | ||
2014-[ ] | X | X | X | X | X | ||
2015-[ ] | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
2015-[ ] | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
2017-[ ] | X | X | X | X | X | ||
2018-[ ] | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
2018-[ ] | X | X | X | X | X | ||
2020-[ ] | X | X | X | X | X | ||
2021-[ ] | X | X | X | X | X | ||
2022-[ ] | X | X | X | X | X | ||
2023-[ ] | X | X | X | X | X | X |
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Rezende, D.A.; Almeida, G.G.F.; Fumagalli, L.A.W. Strategic Digital City: Multiple Projects for Sustainable Urban Management. Sustainability 2024 , 16 , 5450. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16135450
Rezende DA, Almeida GGF, Fumagalli LAW. Strategic Digital City: Multiple Projects for Sustainable Urban Management. Sustainability . 2024; 16(13):5450. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16135450
Rezende, Denis Alcides, Giovana Goretti Feijó Almeida, and Luis André Wernecke Fumagalli. 2024. "Strategic Digital City: Multiple Projects for Sustainable Urban Management" Sustainability 16, no. 13: 5450. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16135450
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If your team is prioritizing project-based work, this episode is for you.
Companies of every size across the world are basing more of their work around projects than at any time in the past. But research shows that nearly two-thirds of those efforts fail.
Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez , who has studied projects and project management for decades, argues that at least some of the blame for these failures lies with executives who misunderstand the fundamentals of projects and fail to dedicate enough of their time to those they sponsor.
In this episode, Nieto-Rodriguez explains how to get better outcomes from project-based work. He also discusses how to frame projects, structure organizations around them, and avoid common pitfalls.
Key episode topics include: strategy, project management, operations strategy, organizational change.
HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.
HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Strategy, case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock new ways of doing business.
Companies of every size, in every industry across the world are basing more of their work around projects than any time in the past. But research shows that nearly two-thirds of those efforts fail.
Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, who has studied projects and project management for decades, argues that at least some of the blame for these failures lies with executives – who misunderstand the fundamentals of projects and fail to dedicate enough of their time to the projects they sponsor.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to get better outcomes from project-based work. You’ll also learn how to frame projects, structure organizations around them, and avoid key pitfalls.
If your team is taking on project-based work or if you’re leading a new project, this episode is for you. It originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in November 2021. Here it is.
ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Alison Beard. If the 20th century was all about operational efficiency in businesses, the 21st century is all about organizational change. And how do new initiatives, products and services, strategies or business models advance? Through project work. It’s what our guest today calls the project economy, and it’s estimated to generate $20 trillion in economic activity and employ 88 million people in project management related roles by 2027.
That’s across every industry and size of company in every part of the world, and yet research indicates that only 35% of projects are successful. At this increasingly critical business function, most of us are doing a pretty terrible job, so how do we get better at it going forward? Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is the former chairman of the Project Management Institute, founder of Projects & Co. and the author of the HBR Project Management Handbook. He’s here to talk about emerging best practices for companies and the people in them. Antonio, welcome.
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: Thank you, Alison. It’s a pleasure to be here.
ALISON BEARD: Project management seems like a clear idea, but how do you define it and think about it in a way that might be different than what people assume?
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: Well, I think one of the challenges with project management that I face personally in my career is that as soon as you talk project management, senior executives and people who are not experts in project management, they think, “Oh, this is something very technical, very tactical. It’s nothing for me,” so I’ve been facing that kind of discontent or disinterest in project management for 25 years. So, for me, I want to move out from that project management term and move it up into projects, and we all do projects. And for me, the definition is anything that has to deal with change, that’s projects. You can manage them through project management, Agile methods, design thinking, product management. But I want to really, I think we need to elevate and say, “Well, all what goes around change, that’s projects,” and we need to manage them.
ALISON BEARD: And how has project work changed over the past few decades?
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: Well, project work has changed in two big areas. One is on a macro level. I’ve been doing research, and of course we all talk about the Marshall Plan after the Second War and all the projects that came from U.S. funding to develop Europe, reconstruct Europe, that was about $13 billion. Then we talk about the financial crisis in 2008 and ’09, we were talking about $3 trillion of projects. And now after the pandemic, we’re talking about $15, $20 trillion of projects. I think the world will never see as many projects as what we’re going to see in the next decade. We need to reconstruct countries, healthcare systems, economies, so that’s from a macro perspective.
From a micro perspective, from the way work is organized in companies, in businesses, it has evolved significantly in the sense that so far, operations have been prime in most of the organizations over the past 80 years. That’s what I say, the world driven by efficiency, where most of the activities were around doing things cheaper, faster, more automated, more volumes. Companies have been organized for that. That’s why you have hierarchies, that’s where cultures like command and control have been in place and so on, but since a few years when artificial intelligence and robots are taking over a big chunk of operations, the type of work is shifted to project based. So, I think the biggest, biggest disruption that happens in the world of projects is what we’re experiencing now. A radical shift from operations to project based work.
ALISON BEARD: And that’s because projects are about sort of discovering the new innovating, and the pace of change is such in every industry now that every company needs to learn how to do this well?
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: Absolutely, and one of the challenges I have to admit, Alison, I’m a big of course, expert in project, a big advocate of project management, but our performance, like you mentioned in introduction, has been poor or appalling. I think project management has not delivered the expected results. We need to find better ways to addressing the change. The future 10 years ago maybe was five years from now, right? So, you would have a project that would last for three years expecting to get some benefits maybe in three, four years, a digital transformation, a new M&A activity, a new business unit, but today, the future is so fast.
So, your future is tomorrow, right? So, that means the acceleration of project based work has to go faster. Let me give you a quick example. Here in Brussels, they were setting, establishing a hospital from scratch, Greenfield, start of the construction in 2016, completion of the hospital in 2020. So, four years of construction, state of the art, but to my surprise, the hospital was open in 2018 before it was co completed. So, I think there’s no company in the world can wait four years to get any benefits from the projects. The future is now, and we need to address that. That’s why you see exploding the number of projects in organizations. I come across companies where they have more projects than people.
ALISON BEARD: And I do want to get to how to do it better, but first, that failure rate is so high. What are some of the most common challenges or problems that projects run into? Why are we getting it so wrong right now?
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: Let me highlight just three. First, I think senior leaders, they don’t have the competencies to be effective sponsorship. Over the years …
ALISON BEARD: They’re not going to like hearing that.
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: I’m sure. I’m sure, but I’m sorry. I always am hundred percent honest on both on my thinking, but I think sponsors have not realized the role is crucial in sponsoring projects. It’s not about how many projects you sponsor, that has been the kind of, “I sponsor 20 projects. I’m the most important person in this company.” Well, now it’s about less is more, and it has been proven. When you are an executive, the CEO, the VP, and you dedicate time to your project, time means not just one hour per month, but a half a day per week. If this is the future of your business, I don’t understand why senior leaders don’t dedicate so much time. They’re all driven by operations and day to day urgency so very few leaders make the space. And second, they don’t understand the fundamentals of projects.
Most of the executives come from a path marketing, finance, operation strategy, and it requires for them to understand that projects are different. That you work in projects in a matrix, that is not so much the hierarchical approach, but this team working and collaboration. So, it’s hard to give you a number, Alison, but I would say 30% to and 40% of the success of the project is if the senior leaders is engaged and understands and drives the project. Alison, the second point, I realized that in the area of change in projects, we are always running with all methods. It happened in the past with IT projects, I started implementing big ERP systems, we were trying to apply some very traditional project management.
It didn’t work. Then Agile came and said, “Well, now we are going to use Agile for every project,” and that, we see today with digital transformations, AI implementations, that doesn’t work. The failure keeps there. The third reason, so I think the role of the project manager, the project management profession has not taken ownership of the results. It has been very focused on process, very focused on documentation. It did make a lot of sense in the sixties, in the fifties where you would do a lot of public sector projects where you want to document everything, but I think the reason that the third reason for me is that project management didn’t evolve to embrace the new reality. And second, project managers have been more a deliver type of role.
In project management, we always said, “Well, who’s accountable for delivering the projects? Who’s accountable for delivering the benefits?” Right? Well, it’s the sponsor. We project managers were responsible of delivering the project on time, on budget, on scope, and that has been the cradle for project management for the last 40 years. And we’ve missed to focus on the outcomes. We’ve missed to focus on the benefits. We’ve missed to take accountability of the results. It’s easy to make a project charter, but what companies are looking for is delivering value, either financial, either social, either sustainability. So, I’m asking my community of project managers to step up, to take ownership, to say, “No, it’s not just the plan. It’s not just delivery on time. What matters actually even more is delivering the benefits, whatever they are, and faster, please.”
ALISON BEARD: So, for an organization that does have existing operations that need to be managed, but then also wants to pursue change and innovation through project work, how does that company change its structure or culture to be able to do both well?
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: Yeah. Well, great question, Alison. I’ve seen so many companies struggling because I’m not saying, “Let’s forget about what you’re doing right today. Let’s forget about that organization that you’ve built so successful for that world driven by efficiency with hierarchies, with yearly plans, with deep expertise, deep technical expertise,” but how can we address change? And change that’s going very fast and our products are just lasting less and less. In the past, we last five years, now five weeks or maybe five months. So, how can we mix that? And it’s a struggle. You cannot say, “Let’s forget my hierarchy and let’s move everything into flat teams and Agile structures and project basing.” That doesn’t work, so I think in the challenge for the leaders, the senior leaders, the executives, is finding that balance. And I always say you need to experiment.
You cannot just go and say, “Well, half of the organization is working without job descriptions. They’re all working project based.” I think my approach, my suggestion is, what are your top five projects? What are the five most important projects that your organization has to deliver? Extract those projects from your daily operations. Extract them. They should not be done by people working in operations. They should have a different structure. They should have a different culture. Put them aside, put them independent. They are own entities, and of course, strong sponsorship. Executives, you need to spend time on them. By extracting for those five top projects already, and moving out to that from that hierarchical structure, that operational activities, that you can see already, quite a lot of acceleration in the way you deliver projects.
ALISON BEARD: Often though, it seems as if particularly project leaders do have operational responsibilities as well, and then sort of, they’re expected to tack the project on top of that. So, how are companies that you work with navigating that balance? Are they giving the executives that time to take away for the project work?
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: Great, great question. This is really the core. One of the core problems I always raise when I do workshops with senior leaders is, how come you cannot extract people from your day to day job and put them in a project? It’s one of the biggest challenges that I see. Even companies which have 10,000 people, they are not able to free up 50 people to carry out the project. The best projects I’ve seen in a research, one of them, of course the iPhone, the first one which I research very much in detail, at that time, they were able to take the day to day people, the senior leader, the best people of Apple at that time and extract them for two years and a half to develop.
And people who were in the operations side said, “Well, I love to join this project, but who’s going to do my day to day activities?” And we were saying, “Don’t bother. Anybody can do your day to day activity. You have a deputy when you’re gone,” said, “We’ll put those people. We’ll promote them. We’ll create more talent, but you, you are the best person in these companies. How come you’re not working in the most strategic project in the future of your work?” Right? It doesn’t make sense, but companies struggle so much and there’s nothing worse that you can do, Alison, than have half time people working in your projects. I work one hour per week, then I work two days per week, then it’s a mess. It’s not how you deliver great projects. At least try to get the best people around.
ALISON BEARD: I think that makes sense when you sort of have a clear idea of what the future’s going to look like, and you know exactly which five projects are the most important, but isn’t the issue in many cases that organizations sort of have 30 projects on the go, and aren’t really sure what’s going to pan out, and they can’t take all of those people away from their day to day activities? So, how do companies prioritize?
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: I’m sure everybody that’s listening this, they can’t relate to that point. Companies have way too many projects. I think that if there’s a core skill for leaders in current times, is focused and prioritization. Knowing what is the big path, and unfortunately, it’s just very hard to see when you see more projects than employees. And like you’re saying, how can they do their day to day job plus three, four time projects? That’s where people get overwhelmed. I am sure that the big reset is linked to this, so many projects plus day to day activities. It’s just stressing everybody out, and I think that when you work with companies where the priorities are clear, where people know, these are our top three, their top five, and we know where we’re going, this is the focus, that’s where I think executives need to work on. On really making the tough decisions.
ALISON BEARD: What are some best practices for putting project teams together?
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: Well, Alison, the formula for engagement is super simple. The most engaged people in a project, you know which one is it? Volunteers. Let me put you an example. Maybe in HBR, you are launching a new project. Why don’t you ask who wants to join?
ALISON BEARD: Makes sense. It’s so simple, but it makes so much sense.
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: It’s so simple, because there’s different things that happen here. First, if nobody wants to volunteer in that project, that project is terrible. Don’t start it. Don’t start it because it’s just, people are going to be forced to do it, so ask for volunteers. Nobody shows up, don’t start it. You don’t need a business case of three months hiring consultants to make you, “Yes, this is …” If nobody jumps on it, terrible. Don’t even start it. It’s just a five minutes test and you save three months of work. Second, if the project talks about business case, very few people get excited, yeah? Who wants to work in a project that delivers 10% return on investment? Yes, nobody. Right? 15%, nobody. Who wants to work in a project which is going to make a more sustainable world? Who’s going to work in a project who’s going to increase the customer experience and make customers more happy, and deliver better value to a customer?
Who wants to work in a project who’s going to create our employees or make our employees more happy, and make us a top company? Lots of people. So, we have been, when we were talking about some of the issues, I think project manage has been focused on talking about things that don’t matter to most of the stakeholders, like a business case. Business case is super important. It’s the return investment, for sure, but that’s not what engages people. The purpose engages people. When you have volunteers, they will dream about your projects. They will do whatever they can to make it happen, and it can be because of the purpose, it can be because they like to work with you, they see a big opportunity to learn. Of course, as a project leader, you need to balance that. But as simple as that, Alison, “Who wants to volunteer?”
ALISON BEARD: How does the rise of project driven work relate to the gig economy? Is your sense that companies are hiring contractors and freelancers to get a lot of this done? Is it a balance or are they trying to handle most of it in-house?
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: I think when we started to hear about the gig economy, I think yes, one of the reasons was, “Let’s hire external resources to work in our projects because we are so rigid internally, like I cannot free, from my 10,000 people, I cannot free 10 of them because they’re so busy in day to day operations plus other projects,” so it started like that. What I see now is that companies are finally taking the step of shifting resources to more project based work. Again, when I use the word project, I include Agile teams, self directed, so very flat project driven teams. So, that’s happening to the point that I talk about it is that companies are canceling job descriptions. We all had job descriptions like, Alison, most of the people listening, probably they had a job description, which tried to describe like, where do you fit in this box? Right? And just do those activities in this box, in that operational field.
That’s your box. If you do it right in two, three years, you just go up in the structure. But many large companies and small companies are realizing that people don’t work in boxes anymore, and job descriptions are not needed anymore. It’s a thing from that world driven by efficiency that together with the chief operating officer in this role, so I think they will not last very long. So, I think the project driven world is now being and embraced by organization where companies like Alibaba or other major players are really embracing this type of work where yeah, they’re looking for people who can have an idea, who can develop the idea, who can implement the project, and who can run the idea of the product or the business and generate value for the companies. This is what I call end-to-end players or strategy implementation professionals. We want this type of end-to-end players who can work transversely in organizations.
ALISON BEARD: Are there lessons from your project management world that might be helpful for people doing more traditional ongoing work?
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: I think project managers have been a bit not very proud about their work. They’ve been seeing like, “Okay, you are not very modern. Agile teams are better, or innovation people,” so I think as a project manager, you need to believe on what you’re doing. Second, I think we need to take more ownership. I’ve been working 25 years in this space and managing large transformation M&A, and I always was waiting for the sponsor. I know the sponsor was very important for my projects, but I was kind of waiting and hoping that the sponsor will learn and follow training on how to do it or make some time for my projects. And I’ve learned the lesson is that the first thing I do in my projects is I go to the sponsor and talk frankly with the sponsor.
“Listen, are you ready to put time on this project? It’s very important. I need you, and I’m happy to coach you. I’m happy to tell you how projects work and what do we need to focus on, but I need your time, and I need a couple of hours per month. Let’s say an hour every two weeks. I need to talk to you. I need decisions from you.” So, I’m very much proactive because I know that role is very important and these people are really busy. One of the biggest lesson learned was being proactive with my project. The second maybe is I talk to many project managers and we are very technical to the point of sometimes difficult to understand, slash boring, right? Who wants to talk to a project manager? Come on. Do you have something more interesting? No, but that’s …
ALISON BEARD: You’re more interesting than I imagine, than my sort of vision of what the project manager is.
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: You see? Because I don’t talk about project management, I don’t talk about Gantt charts, I don’t think that’s my kitchen. That’s what I do when I need to think about making a plan, but you are interested on the bigger picture. You are interested on how my ideas will contribute to our needs as an organization, so I do this exercise with project managers, “Tell your partner what you do without mentioning the words projects and project management,” and they say, “Oh, I’m struggling. What do I do?” And then they start talking about the value they bring, and that’s what people want to hear.
You covered this topic broadly in HBR, but talking, adapting, understanding the language of your stakeholders, using it. That’s how you get their engagement. That’s how you get their attention. That’s how they appreciate your value, and that’s the second big learning. When I did that, things changed for me. Senior leaders wanted to talk to me. When I forced them to prioritize in key projects, they were saying, “Antonio, we want another meeting with you,” was the CEO of the bank, because I force them. I force them to create value. I force them to have strategic dialogue, so I would say if you’re listening, you’re working in this space, move on into that space. Move on on the value creation, on your stakeholder, and things will change very fast.
ALISON BEARD: Well, Antonio, I learned a ton today. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
ANTONIO NIETO-RODRIGUEZ: A pleasure.
HANNAH BATES: That was project management expert Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez in conversation with Alison Beard on the HBR IdeaCast. He’s the author of the Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook.
We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about business strategy from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review. And when you’re ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world’s top business and management experts, find it all at HBR.org.
This episode was produced by Mary Dooe, Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. And special thanks to Rob Eckhardt, Adam Buchholz, Maureen Hoch, Nicole Smith, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.
This article is about strategy.
A spreadsheet template designed to help you keep track of your literature search terms during a systematic search.
1. Log in with your NYU credentials
2. Open and "Make a Copy" to create your own tracker for your literature search strategies
Searching in a comprehensive, systematic way requires authors to execute analogous searches in multiple databases, but not all databases accept the same search syntax, and most databases use different vocabulary for subject headings (or don't use subject headings at all).
As such, once a search strategy has been developed in one database, it is necessary to 'translate' it into a form that will work in a different database.
Here is the same search criteria (diabetes + self management), executed with database-specific search queries for three different databases.
(diabetes OR diabetic* OR (MH "Diabetes Mellitus+")) AND (“self management” OR “self care” OR “self monitoring” OR “self regulation” OR (MH "Self-Management") OR (MH "Self Care+"))
(“diabetes”[tiab] OR “diabetic*”[tiab] OR "Diabetes Mellitus"[Mesh]) AND (“self management”[tiab] OR “self care”[tiab] OR “self monitoring”[tiab] OR “self regulation”[tiab] OR "Self-Management"[Mesh])
(diabetes OR diabetic*) AND (“self management” OR “self care” OR “self monitoring” OR “self regulation”)
For help choosing a citation management tool: .
See comparison list
See schedule of RefWorks, EndNote, and Zotero classes (coded in pink)
If you are using a citation manager to store bibliographic data related to your evidence synthesis project, it is recommended that you maintain back up copies of your data.
Recommended steps for backing up bibliographic data will vary depending on your software of choice (Zotero, EndNote or RefWorks) - more information can be found on the guide for Data Management Planning - Storage & Backup .
Covidence works with reference managers (e.g.,EndNote, Zotero, Refworks, Mendeley) to screen results for the purposes of systematic reviews and other research projects.
Link to Covidence to request a Covidence account using your NYU email address. Accept email invitation and Sign In;
(do NOT click the "free trial" account; do NOT "sign in with Cochrane" Select the option for NYU access).
Covidence Knowledge Base: Importing references in Covidence
PRISMA ( P referred R eporting I tems for S ystematic R eviews and M eta- A nalyses) is an evidence-based set of minimum items for reporting information in systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
Prisma checklist.
Source:
Stotz, S. A., McNealy, K., Begay, R. L., DeSanto, K., Manson, S. M., & Moore, K. R. (2021). Multi-level diabetes prevention and treatment interventions for Native people in the USA and Canada: A scoping review. Current Diabetes Reports, 2 (11), 46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11892-021-01414-3
This article, published in the Journal of the Medical Library Association, answers some frequently asked questions about using the PRISMA 2020 format.
Rethlefsen, M. L., & Page, M. J. (2022). PRISMA 2020 and PRISMA-S: common questions on tracking records and the flow diagram. Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA , 110 (2), 253–257. https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2022.1449
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Project Management: literature Review. May 2017. May 2017. In book: Best Practice Project management for the Sustainable Regeneration of Holy Karbala Province in Iraq (pp.6-99) Chapter: Chapter 2 ...
In order to find out how the front-end notion is used in project management literature, and to see what generic processes form part of the "front end" of a project and how these fit together as a coherent whole, we carried ... research and management science; public sector and healthcare; regional studies, planning and environment; ...
In between systematic and integrative reviews is the narrative review, or semi-structured review, described by Baumeister and Leary (1997). The narrative review typically considers a broad range of literature with equally broad research questions and a purpose that focuses on the understanding of complex areas.
This entry of the series focuses on papers about management science (aka, operations research) models and practice methodologies (e.g., processes, heuristics, tools, and techniques). Project management grew out of management science and was indistinguishable from the field of its origins for many years.
Despite the existence of systematic literature reviews focused on examining the factors contributing to project success, there remains a scarcity of reviews addressing the relationship between the project managers' competencies and project success. To fill this gap in the literature, this review aimed to evaluate peer-reviewed articles, published between 2010 and 2022, and analyze the impact ...
Provides guidelines for conducting a systematic literature review in management research. Torraco (2005) Human Resources: ... 2009), the semi-systematic review process requires more development and tailoring to the specific project (Wong et al., 2013). Often, researchers need to develop their own standards and a detailed plan to ensure the ...
Scale is commonly deployed as a descriptor in the extant project management literature without an associated discussion of what this means. Following a literature review and synthesis of 172 papers we identify three findings. First, most papers addressed the foundational concept of scale obliquely, suggesting a conceptual gap.
The literature review for this research work involves collecting articles from reputed journals (identified by their aims and scope, peer review process, impact factor, indexing status, editorial board and publishing history) such as the International Journal of Project Management, Project Management Journal, Science Direct-Procedia Engineering ...
Sustainability integration in project portfolio management helps shape strategic, organizational, and project-based contexts. The authors conducted a structured literature review from 2000 to 2021 and developed a novel integrative framework presenting a holistic view highlighting three substantive research themes: sustainability mindset, sustainability assessment, and sustainability ...
The extant academic literature on project management has a plethora of project management processes, tools, and techniques but lacks focus on project management principles. While several practitioners' guides are written on principle-based project management, scholarly research in academic literature is lacking.
We conducted a literature review consisting of two parts in order to address the research questions: the first part was an explorative and less structured literature search for alternatives to classical project management; this was followed by the second part, which was a rigid structured literature review consisting of four phases, starting ...
Academic research faces new methods of knowledge production that trigger a need for managing research by projects. However, the literature reports friction between management and research.
This report summarises the results of a literature survey on the front-end of a project (Williams et al. 2018), commissioned by the Project Management Institute (PMI). ... She worked in the banking and financial sector for three years before becoming attracted to the world of project management. Her research career started in January 2017 at ...
The report finds that most EDI research in the literature concerns the construction (37%) and information technology (41%) sectors and uses quantitative methodological techniques (55%). ... and managerial practices. Project management, which is often used as an agent for change, plays a significant role in driving and implementing digital ...
An investigation in a large research organization in South Africa is reported on to determine how closer conformance can be achieved of research projects with the typical characteristics of 'conventional' projects so as to enhance the application of project management techniques to research work.
Moreover, Crawford [ 49] posited a close relationship between PMGs' competencies and PS. Recent literature has underscored the pivotal role of PMGs' competencies in attaining higher levels of success, enhancing efficiency and effectiveness, and consequently increasing the likelihood of PS [ 8 ]. 2.2. Project success.
The application of systematic or structured literature reviews (SLRs) has developed into an established approach in the management domain (Kraus et al. 2020), with 90% of management-related SLRs published within the last 10 years (Clark et al. 2021).Such reviews help to condense knowledge in the field and point to future research directions, thereby enabling theory development (Fink 2010 ...
Existing literature from project management research and other disciplines referring to project management often focuses on this first part of the Design Dimension. The practitioners' references (e.g., Kerzner, 2006; Meredith and Mantel, 2006), bodies of knowledge and methodologies (e.g., Project Management Institute, 2004; Association for ...
Employing a systematic literature review across three major academic databases on business and management studies in the past two decades, this research scrutinizes a final selection of 80 high ...
A list of specific research topics within project management is discussed. The conclusions suggest the existence of significant research opportunities within project management. Download Free PDF View PDF. ... As a result of exploring the literature supporting project management, managers have the ability to make evidence-based decisions about ...
Introduction. Researchers, at all stages of their careers, are facing an ever-increasing deluge of information and deadlines. Additional difficulties arise when one is the Principal Investigator (PI) of those researchers: as group size and scope of inquiry increases, the challenges of managing people and projects and the interlocking timelines, finances, and information pertaining to those ...
The first is to provide a critical investigation of the present body of knowledge in project management practices. Research articles from the major project management journal will be analyzed. The second is to propose an alternative research agenda concerning currently neglected topics, theories and research methods.
We find that, until today, public management literature has only sporadically dealt with the potential influence of project management logics on strategic management and, more in detail, strategy implementation. Furthermore, the review enables a discussion of five organizational drivers fostering an agile approach in public strategy implementation.
Key term/idea Sources Search terms Final results; Collaborative research projects as a project type: Collaborative research project: Journals: • Int. Journal of PM • PM Journal Databases • ABI Inform (proQuest) • EBSCO BSP • Science Direct • "collaborative research" • AND • "project management" in databases 3 (Barnes et al., 2006, Calamel et al., 2012, Gist and Langley ...
Most commonly, the literature review is a part of a research paper, article, book, thesis or dissertation. Sometimes your instructor may ask you to simply write a literature review as a stand-alone document. This handout will consider the literature review as a section of a larger project. A literature review is
However, the factors that might contribute to project teams' performance are scattered throughout the project management literature and links to HRM theories are limited. On the one hand, as Huemann et al. (2007) note, "in the project management literature, a limited amount of research has considered HRM." On the other hand, "the ...
Learn the basics of a literature review from Purdue Owl's Writing a Literature Review; Want to learn about the different types of literature reviews, check out Review: Outline, Strategies, and Examples; by Study Corgi; Examples. To read example literature reviews: 1. Purdue Owl gives this example using APA. 2.
In the last two decades, sustainable urban environments have been predominant, meaning that knowledge production has accompanied this growth. The objective of this study is to present multiple projects for sustainable urban management applied in cities, based on the original Strategic Digital City (SDC) concept, model, and project. The research methodology included an SDC systematic literature ...
June 19, 2024. Companies of every size across the world are basing more of their work around projects than at any time in the past. But research shows that nearly two-thirds of those efforts fail.
PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) is an evidence-based set of minimum items for reporting information in systematic reviews and meta-analyses.Specific PRISMA resources include: PRISMA Checklist. A 27 item checklist whose items refer to the preferred content of a for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses, including suggested content for the ...