MAINTAIN AND STABILISE YOUR PROJECT - Team Calendar
Our experience: we found we needed a team calendar because we were spread physically all around the country and had no idea what were busy times for other disciplines. Having the calendar proved particularly useful for the more senior academics with a lot of research and teaching commitments, who could then block out whole periods of time that they were unavailable. This was especially important during the fieldwork/research phase of the project, but as the project moved into the writing stages became less prominent.
Why?
This might seem a little prescriptive, and at certain times within a project the necessity for something like this will probably wane. However, having a team calendar can really help an interdisciplinary project plan ahead and be aware of schedules/particular times of the year that other disciplines are particular busy and therefore might need to take more of a ‘back seat’ with the project.
How?
So a team calendar can be used for:
• Scheduling of meetings and other events.
• Planning ahead for project related events such as conferences you wish to present at, special editions of journals you wish to publish in or important meetings and workshops with your stakeholders.
• Helps you to be aware of when others in the team are available or not to give feedback, and how long you should give them
• It enables everyone to say up front when they are on holiday/unavailable
There are various possibilities in terms of e-calendars to do this. In our case we used a spreadsheet which required someone to take responsibility for and make sure it was updated and circulated amongst the group regularly. Likewise, everyone has to agree to contribute for it to be effective.
A template to use can be found here….