Practice Abstract - Research and innovation

Teamwork: Communication between partners in a Thematic Network

In addition to communication with all actors in a TN, teamwork and proper communication at the consortium level are also relevant for the success of a project. Thus, it is essential, besides the usual structures of a project, to consider additional organisational aspects for your project:

• Choose a moderator for each discussion/meeting, who is responsible for facilitating and taking the lead in the discussion, so that there is no drifting away from the main topics defined;

• Choose a person responsible for the protocol because the moderator cannot do both. With consent at a video conference can be recorded;

• The project's hierarchical structure should be continued invisibly so that, for example for each subordinate working group and a specific task a contact person is responsible.

Every project / TN has a fixed team, the consortium, which should not be subject to personnel changes from the beginning to the end of the project. In case it is necessary to introduce a new member to the team there should be a handover protocol and ceremony, by an introduction, and welcome to the team, to close the initial communication gaps.

The best way to develop good communication, besides regular physical meetings, is to:

• implement digital visual meetings via video conference

• do regularly retrospective or timebox meetings in smaller organisational groups (e.g. sub-task)

• do well organized, social and informal, meetings to strengthen team building and break down communication barriers

Tools to be used:

• Every video-capable conference software (Skype, Zoom, GotoMeeting, MS Teams, etc.)

• Software that supports interactive digital teamwork (e.g. Mentimeter, Mural, Slack, MS Teams)

The overall aim is to generate a “Team-feeling” without meeting every day at the office.

Source Project
EURAKNOS
Ongoing | 2019-2021
Main funding source
Horizon 2020 (EU Research and Innovation Programme)
Geographical location
Belgium
Project details

Project Keywords