Node: ELIXIR Sweden
Authors: Elin Kronander and Niclas Jareborg, heads of data management
Topics: Gaps to action, Why strategy
A strategy can help a team move from first come, first served to more deliberate choices. This is especially useful when requests grow faster than available capacity.
For a few years we had developed and delivered a recurring 3-day course; Introduction to Data Management Practices. We also participated in collaborations and gave on-demand workshops and seminars. The team had many ideas of what new kind of training materials and activities we needed to develop. The external requests for training collaborations and workshops were more than we had capacity for. We were in a first-come, first-served situation but we wanted to reach a situation where we made conscious decisions and choices. We decided to create a short strategy document for our training and outreach activities and a workplan for the upcoming year.
Two of the data stewards in our team were also involved in training coordination for our node and they were tasked to lead the development of a training strategy document. They organised a few brainstorming sessions with the entire team. It was followed by a co-working session between the two leads where a draft was written. The entire team reviewed and gave feedback and after a few iterations the strategy was approved. It was made publicly available through the SciLifeLab Data repository and is revised yearly.
The strategy has helped us decide which training activities we engage in and when we should decline without engaging in long discussions. It also facilitates long-term planning of activities as well as planning for yearly improvements and continuous development of new training materials.