Best Practices for R&D Project Management: Team Building

Abstract

The future of project management lies in team building and teamwork. This document focuses on team building in R&D projects. The paper starts with the definitions of key words: project, project management, project manager, team, team building. Then there are presented the four key elements for member selection as well as the five typical phases in team management. Team building in research projects is not only about project manager (his role, functions), but also about the other partners and maintaining their constant interest in correctly developing the project. Through this article, the 2 key persons in project management and team members are the project manager and his economic specialist. The cooperation of these two specialists is the essence of the development and implementation of the project. Project managers control all threats through measures such as timely training in leadership skills, conflict management skills, communication skills, while the economic specialists identify and solve all budget problems, maintain and manage the financial accounting records and reporting mechanisms, balancing spend to budget estimates. This article also analyzes the best practices in building a successful research team: mutual trust, project management meetings, technical workshop, monitor and encourage progress, well written consortium agreement.