Getting things done in academia: the challenges with institutional bureaucracy and the need for project management

摘要

This paper presents a case study at a large Midwestern university where agile project management influenced the outcome of change initiatives in an Engineering School (ES). Agile project management encompasses several skills including leadership, communication, organization, conflict management, and the ability to navigate ambiguity. While this skill set is common in many industries, it is very uncommon in higher education. By infusing this diverse way of thinking into transformational efforts aimed at enhancing the student experience, we have disrupted the traditional academic hierarchy, seen greater momentum and greater initial success, and created a new model for “getting things done” in academic organizations.As part of the REvolutionizing engineering and computer science Departments (RED) grant, we aim to improve the culture in the ES. To accomplish this, we have formed grassroots teams consisting of faculty, staff, and students that launch experiments aimed at improving students' professional skills development & departmental culture. This effort has consisted of ~50 participants across 12 teams for three semesters. We did not initially foresee the level of oversight & management needed to run such an effort or the bureaucratic barriers to operationalizing the grassroots teams and experiments. In response to this environment, agile project management was introduced half-way through the first set of experiments. Through observations, surveys, interviews, and outcomes of the experiments themselves, we have characterized the impact of adding agile project management to this program.Our early results indicate that progress can be expedited by an agile project management skill set, and more specifically, the number of experiments launched through grassroots efforts has increased by a factor of 7 semester-over-semester after adding agile project management. Additionally, 92% of participants reported being satisfied with the experience with an average rating of 4 out of 5. Lastly, the value that project managers add was a key theme cited in end-of-semester surveys and interviews. Our early success metrics suggest that this critical industry skill set, generally lacking in academic settings, can make a significant difference in the success of departmental initiatives. We believe that propagating agile project management more broadly in academia can positively influence productivity and expedite the rate of change by re-thinking traditional academic methods of “getting things done”.