Building the project team

Key points from the data:

• Building a project team requires serious thought and can take time.
• The 'right' project team has members who contribute a range of complementary strengths and experiences.
• The 'right' project team has members who contribute as required/expected and do not have to be hounded to do the work.
• The 'right' project team is 'fit for purpose' in terms of, for example, team size, the skills and experiences of team members, and the nature of project officer/manager involvement.

Eight of the ten interviewees commented on the importance of building the ‘right’ project team for the proposed project. The main aspects of team formation were assembling a group of people who could work with each other and also contribute different but complementary knowledge, skills and experiences. The data suggest that assembling a project team is a strategic undertaking that can take some time.

Agnes (D-size institution) suggested applicants should 'have thought about the team they’re going to work with. They don’t have to have a final team but … you’ve got to start with some kind of collective team and cohesive team from the word go'. Chris’s (C) advice was to work with a diverse team which had experience in applying for grants. In his case, a colleague from the same university and on his team had been successful in winning grants in other countries and a team member from another institution 'had a focused and incisive reading of what OLT want'. Trevor (D) made a recommendation along a similar line:

In the writing of those two (successful) grants, a benefit I had was that I was writing with people who were experienced writers of grants anyway, so the other researchers on those teams were a great source of input.

Trevor (D) also commented that the project officer selected to be part of the team 'knew the OLT side of stuff really well'.

Gerry (D) said 'getting the right people involved and on advisory panels, drawing on participants’ networks' was a key and encouraged 'connections with colleagues in the uni and at other universities'. Mikko (A) echoed Gerry's advice by encouraging people to 'develop networks and collaborative teams with colleagues to pursue research and development ideas in your areas of expertise'.

Reflecting on an unsuccessful OLT grant application in which her institution was a partner, Vivien (C) offered a perspective on the size of the team:

I think they did try to include too many people, so too many cooks, and I’ve noticed over the years that the OLT has become more relaxed about small teams … I think the people got their dissemination strategy muddled up with their team composition and you can actually get better dissemination with a small team if that team is functional.

On the matter of being asked to join a project led by another institution, Agnes (D) indicated she preferred a reasonable lead in time for the request to be made. She described one occasion when she was contacted by a lead author from another institution who told her that the application was due in three to four weeks and asked, 'Do you want to work with us?' Agnes (D) commented, 'I have learnt now to say No'. She reflected on her own experience of spending up to six months to put a team together:

Don’t try to do it in less than four months.  Four to six months is ideal, especially if you’re working with national colleagues which you should be.  In fact, I’ll tell you now, basically don’t come otherwise.

Clearly, giving due consideration to who will make up the project team is an important task for lead authors.

Sally (C), Bill (D) and Trevor (D) were all quite strategic in their approach to building their teams, although they did this in slightly different ways. Bill (D) built his team through the ‘project before the project’, that is, he initially piloted his project idea without funding. His approach was well-planned. The pilot project not only tested the potential of the project idea to be scaled up by means a national grant but it also provided the opportunity for people to get a sense of how well they worked together:

We wanted the project to work independent of money, it’s just that the money helps do some things … So the process is first of all helpful for the writers to articulate and it also pulls together a team you know so you can actually get stuff, more stuff done even just because you’re getting other people to think oh yeah I didn’t understand that completely before, I know what you’re doing better now.  So you know building that team and, so all those things can be part of a process which can have … positive benefits.

While Sally (C) had expertise in the topic of her grant application, she found that 'fitting it into an educational framework that came with certain language was the more challenging part'. As such, she found it very helpful to have a partner who either worked in a ‘university teaching unit’ and/or had an educational background 'because of the particular language that OLT uses'. She said, 'It was really important they came from a different perspective to me … and that’s really helped. Because of the broadening and the language, yeah'.

Trevor's (D) approach was to look for a mix of experts and novices by building 'a team of mixed expertise and career stage' believing that both would bring something different and special to a project.

All interviewees, then, believe that ‘good teams’ are composed of people whose different experiences and strengths are complementary.

A final thought was provided by Sally (C) who brought up the matter of team members' contributions to a project’s work. She stressed that it was important to choose project partners 'who would put in equal load. When you asked them to do something they’d do it. You wouldn’t have to chase them'. The importance of this is self-evident. It suggests that applicants should have some at least some familiarity with the work of potential team members as well as an idea of their availability/ability to contribute to the project.

In all, the experiences of the interviewees suggest that the formation of a project team should be a strategic, thoughtful undertaking which takes into account the needs of the project and the nature of the funding body. Forming a project team requires time, thinking and discussion rather than being a last-minute, frantic exercise to fit people to a largely-formed application. Having the team established either through prior work and collaboration or through networks can also result in a sense of ownership, authorship, design and community within the team. This complementarity and cohesiveness is likely to be evident in the grant application.