Managing a research team with a short development timeline can be challenging, but not impossible. You need to balance creativity, quality, and speed, while ensuring clear communication and collaboration among your team members and stakeholders. In this article, you will learn some practical tips on how to lead a research team effectively under tight deadlines.
The first step is to define the scope and goals of your research project. What are the main questions you want to answer, the assumptions you want to test, and the outcomes you want to achieve? How do they align with the business objectives and the user needs? How will you measure the success of your research? Having a clear and shared vision of your research scope and goals will help you prioritize your tasks, allocate your resources, and communicate your expectations to your team and stakeholders.
Defining the scope of research should be a strategically important step. Stakeholder buy in on research goals are important, as they should align with commercial or business priorities.
Cleary defining scope and goals of the research should include defined metrics for success at each major milestone is essential. It is important that key team members are allowed to contribute to the development process and that you have buy in for the plan before starting.
What I have noticed that as one progresses based on the goals and objectives, the acope keeps changing in view of the new insights and newer developments happening all around. So one should be flexible enough to assimilate the surrounding environment.
The next step is to plan your research methods and timeline. Depending on the scope and goals of your project, you may need to use different types of research methods, such as interviews, surveys, observations, experiments, or prototypes. You also need to consider the feasibility, validity, and reliability of each method, as well as the ethical and legal implications. Based on your research methods, you can estimate the time and effort required for each stage of your research process, such as recruitment, data collection, analysis, synthesis, and reporting. You can use tools like Gantt charts, calendars, or Kanban boards to plan and track your research timeline.
Do consider previously conducted research insights as foundation. Often, there are rich insights within the organization that can be reframed and resynthesized as newer research methods as deployed.
Methods and techniques to be uses are not universal but vary in time and space. So it would be appropriate to use need based site specific including indigenous and local knowledge while moving forward.
The third step is to communicate and collaborate with your team and stakeholders. You need to establish regular and transparent communication channels, such as meetings, emails, chats, or reports, to keep everyone updated on the progress, challenges, and insights of your research project. You also need to foster a collaborative culture, where you encourage feedback, input, and participation from your team members and stakeholders. You can use tools like Google Docs, Miro, or Slack to share and discuss your research findings, ideas, and recommendations.
If you want to complete a project quickly, it is critical to empower your key group leaders to make decisions and be responsible for their piece of the project. Foster an environment where your leaders are encouraged to cooperate and discuss issues they are having and that you receive "bad news" positively and that you are there to help, not criticize. Otherwise, you won't find out things are not working until it is too late!
One has to think that all stakeholders including the research organization are sitting on the same side of the table and table is round in shape. Meaning thereby, everybody wants to work for the welfare of each and every stakeholder though the degree and nature may vary.
The fourth step is to adapt and iterate your research plan. You need to be flexible and responsive to the changing needs and constraints of your project. You may need to adjust your research scope, methods, or timeline based on the feedback, data, or results you receive. You may also need to experiment with different approaches or solutions to test your assumptions and hypotheses. You can use tools like A/B testing, usability testing, or user testing to validate and improve your research outcomes.
One should always take into consideration the fast changing nature of technologies and the overall surrounding environment so flexibility has no substitution.
The final step is to deliver and implement your research results. You need to present and communicate your research findings, insights, and recommendations in a clear, concise, and compelling way. You also need to provide actionable and evidence-based suggestions on how to apply your research results to the product development and decision making. You can use tools like PowerPoint, Keynote, or Storyboard to create and deliver your research reports or presentations.
Ultimate objective is to achieve the desired outcome but alas most of the time research results and recommendations are hardly implemented or if implemented, these are dine in piece meal.
Before going deep into the research, evaluation of team members capacity to deliver within the timeline is very important, and often ignored. Eventually, the team members efforts, capacity and research acumen will prove extremely important in meeting the research goals.