Chosing projects: selfish goals
Derek Lowe's In the Pipeline is an interesting peak into drug discovery. Picking and Chosing ties into my interests in project management:
Which projects are worth working on? I'm going to answer that in a very narrow sense: which ones would I want to work on myself (or have my lab assigned to?) I'm rating things on their chance of success, their potential for interesting science, and (negatively) their potential for wasting everyone's time. Today's post could serve as a brief guide for medicinal researchers, and especially for those new to the field.
- avoid "sure things" at all costs
- avoid projects that have multiple "and then we get lucky" steps
- become the expert on your project
From a what-serves-the-company perspective, this doesn't sound right at first. However, these simple "selfish" rules actually do serve the company because there is knowledge behind these rules that looks at the long term viability. Now how to convince discovery management to be honest about which projects they persue?
Being able to choose projects is a great perk of being a consultant, but as an employee of a company I would think this would be harder. If you are the only programmer that knows language X and the company needs something done then you need to do that, not what you may actually want to do.