What team management/coordination software is right for me?
March 6, 2019 3:33 PM Subscribe
I'm an academic scientist working in a lab with a fairly flat hierarchical organization, but with numerous critical shared resources and tasks that need to be coordinated. Our system of email lists, Google calendars, and so forth is stretching to breaking. We need a better system for organizing our communication, scheduling, and to-dos, but there's a bewildering array of options out there. Can you help me find a system that will work well for our needs?
I don't know which details are necessary in making this decision, so here's a perhaps over-long description of our lab and what we need.
Personnel
1. Our principal investigator, who is extremely busy with a variety of roles and leaves the day-to-day running of the lab to others.
2. Our lab manager, who despite the title has several jobs that aren't really management. She is effectively doing three complete full-time jobs and is already overworked, and avoiding extra work burden for her is a priority.
3. 10-20 postdocs and graduate students. These are the core research staff, and while there is a certain amount of rough seniority, the expectation is that everyone in this pool is basically equal in rank and responsibility, and will cooperate to ensure that the lab is run smoothly.
4. A handful of technicians.
5. A relatively fluid group of undergraduates. Some individuals remain in the lab for years, others for only a few months, depending on their projects and motivation. Each undergraduate is typically mentored/managed by one postdoc or graduate student, though some participate in multiple projects.
6. A wide assortment of collaborators. This includes neighboring colleagues who occasionally attend our lab meetings, colleagues at other institutions participating in specific research projects, support staff outside the lab who work closely with us on maintaining some of our systems, and friends-of-the-lab who like to keep apprised of social events.
Groups
Each postdoc and graduate student has their own research project(s) that they are in charge of, but these projects can be organized roughly into three domains according to shared methods and resources. Some individuals participate in more than one domain, but others don't, and certain communications need to be limited to individuals participating in a given domain.
What we need
For communication, email, lots of email. We use listservs to manage email groups, which works okay, but is a bit of a burden when it comes to adding and removing new members, particular the undergraduates who come and go relatively frequently. The number of different email groups is starting to get somewhat cumbersome and confusing for people to keep track of, though, and some people have slipped through the cracks, not ending up on a list they should have been on, and not knowing there was such a list.
One of the research groups, which is more heavily reliant on collaboration with geographically distant researchers, also uses Slack pretty heavily and likes it. The rest of us used Slack for a while but it never really caught on.
For scheduling resources and certain tasks, we use Google Calendar, with different calendars for different purposes. The sheer number of calendars has now gotten out of control, though, and it's getting hard to keep track of who needs access to which calendar. This is also not a great way of handling daily tasks, so we end up doing a lot of email and face-to-face communication for those still.
For collaborative work, we sometimes use Google Docs, which works well, and sometimes pass around MS Word documents with revisions, which doesn't work very well but is still our PI's preferred method because it's what he's most used to. File sharing and integration with Google Docs is important for any solution we have.
We use Quartzy to handle purchasing.
Those of us who do a lot of programming use GitHub or GitLab for source control. For the rest of us this is too specialized.
What I've looked into
I've taken a look at some of the apps that advertise here on Metafilter, like Monday.com. They seem a little more specialized for software, marketing, or other similar work, and not necessarily as well suited to our work which has a mix of daily and weekly tasks with rotating responsibilities as well as more specific project-related tasks.
I also this afternoon took a look at Basecamp. It seems pretty close to what I'm looking for, but doesn't have a built-in feature for creating recurring tasks as far as I can tell.
It seems like we may need some kind of automation system like IFTTT, Automate.io, or Zapier in order to get another system to do exactly what we need (e.g., to have Basecamp schedule a month's worth of daily to-dos once per month), but this is yet another bewildering array of options that I'm not sure how to choose between.
TL;DR
Can you recommend to me a team management/coordination app like Basecamp or Monday.com based on your experiences with it, given our needs? I'm sure there are other options out there that I don't even know about. Is some kind of automation app going to be necessary to address our needs? And if so, how do I pick between the array of apparently identical options?
(Note, the right answer here is probably "you need a manager and an administrative assistant," but that's not on the table at the moment unfortunately.)
I don't know which details are necessary in making this decision, so here's a perhaps over-long description of our lab and what we need.
Personnel
1. Our principal investigator, who is extremely busy with a variety of roles and leaves the day-to-day running of the lab to others.
2. Our lab manager, who despite the title has several jobs that aren't really management. She is effectively doing three complete full-time jobs and is already overworked, and avoiding extra work burden for her is a priority.
3. 10-20 postdocs and graduate students. These are the core research staff, and while there is a certain amount of rough seniority, the expectation is that everyone in this pool is basically equal in rank and responsibility, and will cooperate to ensure that the lab is run smoothly.
4. A handful of technicians.
5. A relatively fluid group of undergraduates. Some individuals remain in the lab for years, others for only a few months, depending on their projects and motivation. Each undergraduate is typically mentored/managed by one postdoc or graduate student, though some participate in multiple projects.
6. A wide assortment of collaborators. This includes neighboring colleagues who occasionally attend our lab meetings, colleagues at other institutions participating in specific research projects, support staff outside the lab who work closely with us on maintaining some of our systems, and friends-of-the-lab who like to keep apprised of social events.
Groups
Each postdoc and graduate student has their own research project(s) that they are in charge of, but these projects can be organized roughly into three domains according to shared methods and resources. Some individuals participate in more than one domain, but others don't, and certain communications need to be limited to individuals participating in a given domain.
What we need
- Group communication
- Efficiently send communications to everyone in a group, where that group may be the entire lab, everyone working in a shared domain, etc.
- Resource management
- Certain shared resources (equipment, rooms, etc.) need to be scheduled.
- Routine shared task management
- Certain maintenance tasks are performed daily or weekly. This is one of the most complex and important problems to solve. Because of the nature of the tasks, it is absolutely critical that they be done as scheduled, but it is also relatively easy for individuals to complete them when they have the opportunity. Basically, we have a system of rotating responsibility for doing these tasks, but anyone can jump in and take care of them if it's convenient. We want to be able to maintain but streamline this system.
- Project management and collaborative work
- Certain projects (e.g., grant applications, papers) have more well-defined milestones and deadlines, and require sharing and updating files (mostly text but also figures and data).
For communication, email, lots of email. We use listservs to manage email groups, which works okay, but is a bit of a burden when it comes to adding and removing new members, particular the undergraduates who come and go relatively frequently. The number of different email groups is starting to get somewhat cumbersome and confusing for people to keep track of, though, and some people have slipped through the cracks, not ending up on a list they should have been on, and not knowing there was such a list.
One of the research groups, which is more heavily reliant on collaboration with geographically distant researchers, also uses Slack pretty heavily and likes it. The rest of us used Slack for a while but it never really caught on.
For scheduling resources and certain tasks, we use Google Calendar, with different calendars for different purposes. The sheer number of calendars has now gotten out of control, though, and it's getting hard to keep track of who needs access to which calendar. This is also not a great way of handling daily tasks, so we end up doing a lot of email and face-to-face communication for those still.
For collaborative work, we sometimes use Google Docs, which works well, and sometimes pass around MS Word documents with revisions, which doesn't work very well but is still our PI's preferred method because it's what he's most used to. File sharing and integration with Google Docs is important for any solution we have.
We use Quartzy to handle purchasing.
Those of us who do a lot of programming use GitHub or GitLab for source control. For the rest of us this is too specialized.
What I've looked into
I've taken a look at some of the apps that advertise here on Metafilter, like Monday.com. They seem a little more specialized for software, marketing, or other similar work, and not necessarily as well suited to our work which has a mix of daily and weekly tasks with rotating responsibilities as well as more specific project-related tasks.
I also this afternoon took a look at Basecamp. It seems pretty close to what I'm looking for, but doesn't have a built-in feature for creating recurring tasks as far as I can tell.
It seems like we may need some kind of automation system like IFTTT, Automate.io, or Zapier in order to get another system to do exactly what we need (e.g., to have Basecamp schedule a month's worth of daily to-dos once per month), but this is yet another bewildering array of options that I'm not sure how to choose between.
TL;DR
Can you recommend to me a team management/coordination app like Basecamp or Monday.com based on your experiences with it, given our needs? I'm sure there are other options out there that I don't even know about. Is some kind of automation app going to be necessary to address our needs? And if so, how do I pick between the array of apparently identical options?
(Note, the right answer here is probably "you need a manager and an administrative assistant," but that's not on the table at the moment unfortunately.)
Best answer: At work, we use Atlassian’s Jira, Crowd, Confluence, and probably others in the suite to manage our internal wikis, create and manage documentation, report incidents, track projects and calendars, and all sorts of stuff. It appears to allow integration with Google Drive as well.
https://www.atlassian.com/
posted by Autumnheart at 5:43 PM on March 6, 2019 [1 favorite]
https://www.atlassian.com/
posted by Autumnheart at 5:43 PM on March 6, 2019 [1 favorite]
I really like Trello for a lot of these things.
It has integration with Google Calendar, Google Drive, Slack and a million other services that I know nothing about. So you could keep a bunch of the tools you are already using, but make Trello boards your one-stop shop that all team members need to check first to find all the other things. It also integrates with all the automation stuff like IFTTT and Zapier etc if you do determine you need those.
posted by lollusc at 9:02 PM on March 6, 2019 [2 favorites]
It has integration with Google Calendar, Google Drive, Slack and a million other services that I know nothing about. So you could keep a bunch of the tools you are already using, but make Trello boards your one-stop shop that all team members need to check first to find all the other things. It also integrates with all the automation stuff like IFTTT and Zapier etc if you do determine you need those.
posted by lollusc at 9:02 PM on March 6, 2019 [2 favorites]
Best answer: I know you said you've tried Slack and it didn't catch on, but I think it is the best solution to your communication issues. You can also set recurring reminders in Slack for specific users, a group of users, or channels, which could help with the daily and weekly tasks. Can you identify a reason that Slack uptake didn't work before, and try another rollout that addresses some of those issues? One adoption approach that I've seen work well is to make a policy that all communication on X project has to be in Slack, so anybody contributing to that project has to get used to using it.
For the project-based stuff, I think a board-based task management system like Trello or Jira is the best. Trello is a little more user-friendly for beginners, I think. Both of those will integrate with Slack. Asana is also pretty good.
For resource management, unfortunately I think a calendar is your best option. But maybe if you get a bunch of the task-based stuff out of the calendars, using them just for resource management will be more feasible.
Good luck, this stuff is hard!
posted by JuliaJellicoe at 5:31 AM on March 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
For the project-based stuff, I think a board-based task management system like Trello or Jira is the best. Trello is a little more user-friendly for beginners, I think. Both of those will integrate with Slack. Asana is also pretty good.
For resource management, unfortunately I think a calendar is your best option. But maybe if you get a bunch of the task-based stuff out of the calendars, using them just for resource management will be more feasible.
Good luck, this stuff is hard!
posted by JuliaJellicoe at 5:31 AM on March 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Asana/Trello + Slack + Google Docs can all be integrated together and will handle all of this. In order to make it work well, you have to set norms about how to use each platform (naming conventions, channels, etc.) Here's the guide I helped write for a previous workplace that may be useful for any chat platform you work with.
posted by melodykramer at 9:54 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by melodykramer at 9:54 AM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by nkknkk at 3:40 PM on March 6, 2019 [1 favorite]