Project Management Challenges
We all know that managing several projects at a time can be a challenging task, especially for newcomers or smaller institutions. We at EMG group are currently involved in more than a dozen running projects funded within Horizon 2020 and other EU programmes. Even though we have 20 years of experience, smooth implementation in each project is not always easy for us, but our team is dedicated to finding tailored solutions in each case.
Europa Media’s Knowledge Base –Templates and Guiding Materials covering the full project cycle
We are happy to share our experience and knowledge during our training courses in order to facilitate the project management process for various organizations involved in H2020; however, we also go beyond teaching.
Our project managers have devised a number of practical tools and templates they use for the administrative coordination, budgeting and financial reporting, following up on dissemination and exploitation activities as well as knowledge and data management within their own projects. All these templates are available on our website, as part of our Knowledge Base. Additionally, we included several guiding materials for coordinators and beneficiaries of EU funding programmes and provided the in-depth analysis of various funding schemes and R&I landscape beyond Horizon 2020.
Which template to use? Learn from our project managers!
To show you the practical use of the templates, we are launching a series of informative posts, where our project managers share their tips on how to facilitate your everyday work.
My personal all-time favourite is the Dissemination Report Table.
We use a simple and yet efficient excel table that is filled in by all partners on a regular (3-monthly) basis. It contains several tabs, depending on the project. It is important to include the “How to fill in the table” tab so that partners do not bombard the coordinator with questions every time they try to work with it. Our instructions are straightforward:
- partners report on dissemination activities they conducted (choosing from a preset list of activities (participation at events, articles, presentation of the project, etc.) and specifying the title, time, location and the link to each entry;
- partners can provide suggestions for future events to attend in the next 3-6 months;
- partners collect any mentions of the project in the media, platforms, press, specifying the title, time, geographical coverage and the link;
- scientific publications are listed in a separate tab;
- the final tab always includes target monitoring – listing main dissemination indicators according to the Grant Agreement (e.g. number of events to attend or articles to be written) and the progress towards the targets (numbers tracked at a specific checkpoint, usually on a 6-monthly basis).
This table facilitates the interim and final reporting process as well as provides a good overview of the dissemination activities conducted within the project.
What do you think of our approach? Are you using another tool? Share it with us on Twitter by using #H2020PMtips
And stay tuned for the next updates – my colleagues will soon be sharing the templates that they prefer!
