EVALUATE, REFLECT AND CHANGE - Appreciate and account for ‘failures’
Our experience: it became apparent quite early on in our project that there were elements which we were initially convinced were going to be vital to our research that soon became somewhat redundant to the key trajectory. One such example, was our plan to run a sister project in Bangladesh and to install PV panels on high rise buildings there. For several reasons this did not happen. It was not that we one day suddenly decided we were not doing this element of research, it just sort of never happened as our research progressed along a different track. It was only through discussions at a reflexive session (see Regular reflexive sessions), focusing on the trajectory and ‘path travelled’ of the project that this change really came to light. Through the introduction of the project timeline we discovered that there were other elements such as this that had not happened. At first we named them the ‘project graveyard’ but upon further inspection many of these elements were still continuing just in a different way. So with regards the Bangladesh example, some of this work was being undertaken by a PhD student associated to the project. So instead we named these elements the ‘project chameleons’, and part of our project’s ‘excess’ and network.
Why?
So many projects only ever capture their successes; be it milestones, goals reached or the things they think they have done really well. But what about the things that did not go so well? Paths travelled that didn’t work out? Things that get left by the wayside?
All of these are part of a project’s trajectory and part of what makes a project what it is. And most importantly shapes its interdisciplinarity. These elements should not just be brushed aside and ignored; the ‘failures’ of a project are just as important as the successes.
Having a project timeline (see Create and maintain a project timeline) can help to document some of these different paths and alternative ideas which do not come to fruition. Sometimes, as in our case, many of these trajectories carried on, just in a different format, but their network remained part of ours. Some of them reappeared at a later stage in a different guise.
All of these are part of the project’s ‘excess’ (see also Time out from work matters)– the things which occur around and along the project, but which make it what it is.
How?
As discussed above both having regular meetings and reflexive sessions and also keeping a project timeline which everyone can contribute to can help to account for the different project paths and elements which may at first seem like failings.