Running a multi-investigator application
A multi-investigator application combines researchers' expertise and resources but adds complexity to planning, coordination and editing. Early agreement on responsibilities, project-management tools and checks across the assembled document help keep the work aligned.
Team benefits and coordination
Multidisciplinary teams can develop innovative projects, pool resources and expertise, draw on strong curricula vitae, and give young investigators opportunities to form alliances alongside established scientific leaders. Team applications increase the complexity of grant development, and extended projects can make it difficult to maintain cohesion among writers and investigators.
Grant development can combine scientific work with project-management tools: identifying the development life cycle, using work breakdown structures and critical-path scheduling, and having the lead researcher or coordinator manage the application process. In 2008, a research communications team reported using layered work breakdown structures in developing a fully funded $230 million application involving more than 80 scientists and clinician-investigators at four sites over nine months. Its tactics for team integration across planning, preparation, implementation and evaluation were:
- Involve writers early along the critical path.
- Define interim deliverables.
- Establish a communications plan.
- Develop a style quality plan.
- Maintain a project health checklist for writers.
- Share the lessons and the credit.
Planning and responsibilities
Research into an application's requirements should precede drafting and support a plan from the first meeting through submission. Requirements can extend beyond the research proposal to patient and institutional benefits and employment opportunities for new researchers. Detailed assessment of each agency's specifications helps determine the time and resources needed. Team members should discuss the project's scope, research focus and responsibility for each section at the start to avoid miscommunication arising from different expectations.
Organisation is needed because deadlines are fixed, response time may be short, and problems can arise at inconvenient times. A responsibility matrix lists each proposal part, its requirements and page limit, and the team member assigned to it; completed parts are checked off so that none is missed. One organisation designates a single person to manage each application and provide clear lines of communication.
Consistency across components
Program Project applications combine several investigator-led projects, often across departments, and require stylistic and content consistency across components. An institutional editing team pairs editors with individual project leaders, then checks the assembled application for consistency once its components are finalised.
A short style guide established early can supplement standard style manuals for a multicomponent application. It lists definitions and acronyms, agreed word and phrase formats such as italicisation and hyphenation, and the principal investigator's stylistic preferences, so that these are agreed before final proofreading.