At the beginning of your project, you should clearly understand what the project is planning to achieve as the primary outcome.

There is the need to write in any project you do. What needs to be written, and how much of your time it takes will be different for everyone, but most scientists will underestimate how much of their time will be spent writing.

For your science to have an impact, it needs to be accessible to as many people as possible.

The first step in project risk planning and management is identifying what the potential positive and negative risks are for your project and capturing these in the risk register.

Communication is a skill that must be learned.

Scientific experiments need to be replicable, otherwise the credibility of any results you get may become questionable if no one else can demonstrate what you did.

The old adage, ‘you’ve got to be in it to win it’ applies to awards in science just as much as it does in any other context.

Projects are defined by three main constraints – time, cost and quality. Managing the budget is part of the third stage of project management documentation to mitigate project risks.