©2025 WashU Medicine ©2025 WashU Medicine Personal Project Management Henry Burgess Principles for building a personal project management workflow as a Research Software Engineer These are my own opinions and experiences and may not represent the views of my employer.
©2025 WashU Medicine Agenda Personal Project Management DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSCIENCE 2 What is Personal Project Management (PPM)? Why is PPM important? Principle 1: Your workflow should work for you Principle 2: Complexity is an enemy of effective work Principle 3: Don’t be afraid to mimic industry Principle 4: Take advantage of any independence Practical applications of PPM
©2025 WashU Medicine ©2025 WashU Medicine DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSCIENCE 3 About Me Background and career path •Software Engineer II in the Brain Development and Disorders Laboratory at WashU •Bachelors of Engineering (‘21), Master of Engineering Management (‘26) •Grew up in Australia, relocated to St. Louis in 2021 Undergraduate Research Research Assistant Software Engineer II MEM Degree 2020 2021 2025
©2025 WashU Medicine Brain Development and Disorders Lab Studying how brain circuits form during development and how these circuits mediate behavior DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSCIENCE 4 Human Corpus Callosum Dysgenesis Cellular and molecular mechanisms of early brain wiring Activity-dependent mechanisms of early brain wiring Research Themes Projects As the only Research Software Engineer in my lab, how do I manage multiple projects, and create software with complex requirements that is reliable and reproducible? Front-End Full-Stack VR
©2025 WashU Medicine ©2025 WashU Medicine DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSCIENCE 5 What is Personal Project Management (PPM)? The active management of an individual’s general tasks and specialized tasks •Personal project management works alongside existing project management systems •Keeping track of the current state of work to have a retrievable mental model •PPM “tools” are any software or methods for managing these tasks General Tasks Specialized Tasks Highly individual, less specific scope, fewer stakeholders Tied to a project or goal, defined scope of work, specific skills required
©2025 WashU Medicine ©2025 WashU Medicine DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSCIENCE 6 Why is PPM important? 1. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/yes-you-can-measure-software-developer-productivity 2. https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/measuring-developer-productivity 3. https://hbr.org/2021/01/productivity-is-about-your-systems-not-your-people Professionally Personally •Software Engineer productivity is hard to measure using conventional metrics [1][2] •Organization and productivity are related [3], good PPM enables organization •Innumerable tools, platforms, and techniques available for project management •Effective and strategic PPM is an exercise in knowing yourself •Empowers you to be the most productive you can be within your current context •Nurtures technical versatility and furthers professional development
©2025 WashU Medicine Principle 1: Your workflow should work for you Making our workflows RSE-centered DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSCIENCE 7 •Do we have an inverted perspective of project management tools? •How much of our way of working is influenced by the tools we use? •Handheld tools are ergonomic for a reason •Effective PPM workflows are shaped by and support our ways of working •What if we don’t have control over the tools we use? •Does every work item have a place? •Can I return to my desk tomorrow and continue where I left off? •Set boundaries of required tools within your PPM workflow Goal: Re-focus our PPM workflows to the actual needs of RSEs
©2025 WashU Medicine Principle 2: Complexity is an enemy of effective work “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” - Confucius DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSCIENCE 8 •Project management tools are useless if you don’t use them •Tools are used because you either have to or want to •Tradeoffs must be made between customizability and simplicity •Risk A: Using highly customizable tools over simpler alternatives •Risk B: Using simple tools where robust structure is required Customizability Simplicity Goal: Incentivizing effective PPM through minimizing complexity •A significant motivator for wanting to use a tool is convenience: •Can I understand how to use this tool as part of my PPM workflow? •Is it flexible enough to meet my ways of working?
©2025 WashU Medicine Principle 3: Don’t be afraid to mimic industry Inspiration or influence? DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSCIENCE 9 •Successful and highly productive organizations have mature project management structures •Organizations of scale lean on effective project management to be successful •We can take inspiration from these workflows without being influenced by them •Evaluating an industry workflow: •What tools do they use? •How much work (buy-in) is required from the individual? •How do they integrate these tools with their code and other standards? Goal: Isolate genuinely good ideas from the noise of opinion or the status quo
©2025 WashU Medicine ©2025 WashU Medicine DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSCIENCE 16 In Summary For Reflection •How do you approach personal project management? •How could you apply some of these Principles to strengthen your workflow? Principle 4: Take advantage of any independence Principle 1: Your workflow should work for you Principle 2: Complexity is an enemy of effective work Principle 3: Don’t be afraid to mimic industry
©2025 WashU Medicine Acknowledgements DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSCIENCE 17 Brain Development and Disorders Lab Linda Richards (PI), Ryan Dean, Tiffany Earle, Lynda Wilmott, Suranjana Pal, Nathan Mundell, Jonathan Lim, Emran Hossen, Fujun Chen Collaborators Joe Barnby, Robin Fiévet, Dave Brownell Education Gary Baker LinkedIn: Henry Burgess (@henryjburg) GitHub: Henry Burgess (@henryjburg) Email:
[email protected] Let’s Connect! Brain Development and Disorders Lab GitHub: @Brain-Development-and-Disorders-Lab Website: https://sites.wustl.edu/richardslab
