Principles for developing a personal project management workflow as a Research Software Engineer in an autonomous or highly independent context

Research Software Engineers (RSEs) often work in autonomous or highly independent contexts and must develop effective personal project management (PPM) workflows to deliver projects successfully. It can be challenging to manage multiple projects, not due to a lack of project management platforms, but because these platforms rarely align with individual working styles. Having utilized and evaluated multiple platforms, we aim to develop a set of principles for taking an RSE-centric approach when developing a PPM workflow. Beginning with a set of existing projects, individual tasks were used to populate and test three popular PPM tools: Notion, Jira, and Trello. These tools were used daily for at least one month each and evaluated on criteria including usability, flexibility, and overall utilization. Based on these evaluations, a set of principles were created to summarize the rationale used when discerning between personal preferences and features offered by these platforms. These principles can be summarized as: “Your workflow should work for you” (a PPM workflow adapts to the RSE’s way of work); “Complexity is the enemy of effective work” (complicated PPM workflows can inhibit productivity); “Don’t be afraid to copy industry” (platforms widely used in industry are not perfect, however they can provide tested structure); and “Take advantage of all independence afforded to you” (independence provides the opportunity to evaluate different platforms). These principles return the focus of a PPM workflow to the RSE and their way of working, rather than the features of a platform being sold. RSEs working in autonomous or highly independent contexts will benefit from an RSE-centric workflow, and taking time to develop a PPM workflow with these principles in mind will continue to nurture technical versatility and professional development.