Project management in multi-disciplinary collaborative research

Abstract

Project management in multi-disciplinary collaborative research requires a wide variety of skills that go beyond those necessary for 'traditional' project management roles. This need is derived from many sources. The difference in culture between academic and commercial projects, and the need to manage many partners - who all have competing drivers and constraints - are both factors that are at the heart of these differences with the commercial world. Within the United Kingdom, the e-Science Programme has funded many such multi-disciplinary collaborative research projects. An example of such an e-Science project is eDiaMoND, which has the principal objective of developing a prototype grid-enabled distributed database that is sympathetic to the practices employed within the UK's NHS Breast Screening Programme. This paper explores the complexities of managing this project as a case study and identifies learning points for other collaborative projects in the research and development domain.