jonathan@researchcomputingteams.org
This resource first appeared in issue #61 on 12 Feb 2021 and has tags Strategy: Working with Decision Makers, Strategy: Working with Stakeholders
Templates for Writing a Better Board Report! - Dolph Ward Goldenburg
Research computing leadership can and should learn a lot from nonprofit leadership. Research computing grant-writing is are more like writing for nonprofit grants than it is for research grants (remind me to write this blog post some day). Managing open-source contributions is exactly managing volunteers. Stakeholder management, community outreach… there’s a lot of overlap.
This particular blog post won’t be relevant to all research computing managers. Some of us have mangers who are themselves involved in research computing, who because of their role keep track of the details of our work. Say, you’re a Manager, Research Software Development and you report to a Director, Research Computing - this article might not be relevant to you.
But if you are the technical lead of a project, and you report to a Scientific Advisory Board, either as their direct report or as an important source of stakeholder input. Then it can be very useful to think of that relationship as you heading a nonprofit and reporting to a board, and a lot of advice about keeping that relationship healthy and useful both ways carries over very nicely from nonprofit leadership.
If you’re meeting with your SAB monthly or quarterly, it can be hard to pull your head up out of the weeds and think about things they care about. If you talk too much about technical or team management details, at best you’ll bore them, and at worst they’ll decide to start directing you on those topics. (And why wouldn’t they? You’re the one bringing it up to them!)
Goldenburg has a board report template (in slides or a document) for like a two page regular report
The first topic and the last two in particular are genius - it primes the board members to be focussed on the big picture, and it lets you get feedback in the areas that you really care about getting input from them.
