Research Excellence Framework: Second consultation on the assessment and funding of research

HEFCE have published a consultation on our proposals for the Research Excellence Framework, which can be viewed at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2009/09_38/

Quickstep into rapid innovation project management

As I’m on annual leave for 10 days from tomorrow, I’ve been trying to set up the first couple of our monthly project meetings before I go – past experience has taught me that getting your project team all together in one room is easier said than done; the whole point of #jiscri, of course, is that the approach is agile and light and I’ll definately be making as much use of Web 2.0 as possible to communicate with the project team but there really is no substitute for a good old fashioned face to face meeting with luke-warm tea and biscuits.

I haven’t yet seen the project documentation but Wendy has had a preliminary discussion with the programme manager, Andy McGregor, who has indicated that the blog should be the primary mechanism for reporting on our project – in lieu of a formal final project report; there will be specific areas we need to address in our blog posts and I’m looking forward to learning more about this aspect of the programme.  Andy also referred to a couple of other #jiscri projects that it would be useful for us to liaise with; R4R (Readiness for REF) at Kings College – http://www.kcl.ac.uk/iss/cerch/projects/portfolio/r4r.html – and one building an API for TicTocs (don’t quote me on that – need to learn more).

So.  Our first “scrum” is scheduled for Monday 13th July; in the first instance, we should all aim to gather information independently ahead of the scrum which will necessarily be focussed on planning to scope the likely project trajectory – we can think about technical developments in more detail at that meeting.

For the record and by initial only (until they introduce themselves here I hope!) our scrum is:

NS, WL, AS, MT, BB, KB, PD, PJ