Systematicity is a thing to remember.
It is better to do a small thing regularly and for the entire life of a project than to start with a considerable investment in planning, prepare detailed plans, and then forget about them.
{DAILY INCREMENTS, PROJECT DIARY, COMMON SENSE, ADEQUACY}
Think about a bridge.
Its primary purpose is connecting two parts so people and cars can travel from one end to another.
The bridge must support these people and not break down, which sometimes happens. The bridge must also support its weight. Also, the more materials, the more the cost will be.
Thus, we aim for a light and reliable construction.
It is the same with planning: from here to there, it must be reliable and sturdy yet not too heavy.
Planning takes resources—the planning overhead. Often, it will be time. It might also be money. {ADMINISTRATIVE OVERHEAD}
What can you do to plan efficiently?
First, only do things that bring value. If somebody tells you to fill out the form, understand why you should do so. What benefit does it give to you? If you cannot find a reason, do not do it. {TIME MANAGEMENT}
Do not download templates from the Web just because somebody had time and desire to upload them there. You can do better.
Second, understand why you need planning. If you do not know why you need it, don’t plan. Yet, how else will you reduce uncertainty?
Third, find out why you spend “a lot of time planning.” Do you feel insecure? Do you delay starting the work? Do you want everything to be perfect? Any other reason? {PROCRASTINATION}
Remember, usually, it is better to “somehow and on time” than “perfect and never.”
{COMMON SENSE, ADEQUACY}
Most projects, big and small, only need some of the documents discussed.
Planning, we intend to save time and increase chances for success, not otherwise. Thus, we must be rational and not hinder work with the planning overhead.
Yet, thinking ahead, noticing our forecasts, and leaving tracks is a good habit, even for tiny independent projects.
Moreover, tiny independent projects are a good lab for experimentation: the stakes are low, and the delay in seeing results is short.
{TRACK PERFORMANCE, DELAY, TRIAL AND ERROR, PROJECT DIARY, BUILD YOUR LAB, COMMON SENSE, ADMINISTRATIVE OVERHEAD}
Whenever you think of managing anything, remember an administrative overhead—the cost of organizing, coordinating, planning, etc. {ADMINISTRATIVE OVERHEAD}
Thus, as we discussed, avoid doing anything that does not bring value or pleasure.
At a minimum, start a project diary in software that you have and know well (e.g., MS Excel), where you can track things that happened on your project. {PROJECT DIARY}
For instance, on 24.07.24 (column 1, when?), you met Dr. Mabuse (column 2, who?), discussed the problems of gambling (column 3, did what?), and decided to jog instead (column 4, decided what?).
Spending a minute daily to fill the diary will give you a tool to recover the project's history and understand what happened, when, and why. {DAILY INCREMENTS}
Depending on your needs, you can increase the assortment of items you want to retain and put down your assumptions, activities, dates, people, contact data, etc.
You decide the level of detail: it does not take much time but is a great help when you need to scroll back and see how, when, and what originated. {ADEQUACY, COMMON SENSE}
As for the project plan, limiting it to scope, schedule, budget, communication, and risks will be enough in most cases.
{PROJECT: A PARAMEDIC APPROACH}
To better grasp the uncertain future, spend more on a more accurate understanding of your work today.
It means tracking your work, having numbers from previous projects, and checkups.
{TRACK PERFORMANCE, 100 SPLIT, CHECKPOINT}
Likely, you overestimate it because you have never estimated your efficiency in the first place.
Study your productivity: keep track of your time and learn how much you spend on what. Without this, it will be impossible to become an expert.
{100’ SPLIT, TRACK PERFORMANCE, EXPERT}
If you know that they change, you might also know how they change, and you can use this knowledge.
Usually, most people are productive before noon and the least productive around 13-15.
Having a good night's sleep is critical during any season.
{LACK OF MOTIVATION, 100 SPLIT, TRACK PERFORMANCE, HETEROGENEITY, WHO AM I?}
It depends on what time frame you imply by the word “simultaneously:” done during the same day or, maybe, week?
You can do them both during the same day for a small project. And if it is a tiny one, as planning a small picnic, you can finish both during the same hour.
It is critical to remember that the schedule and budget grow from the project scope, which grows from the product scope.
Thus, you can only accurately estimate the money or time you need if you clearly understand what you intend to do.
{EXPLORE VS. EXPLOIT, SAMPLING RATE, ENDPOINT TIERS, ECPM}
You do not add buffers (reserves) to prolong the project or because somebody obliges you—you add them to protect yourself from not delivering on the estimated time—to protect yourself against uncertainty. {JUST IN CASE, BUFFER}
If you can deliver ahead of the schedule, do it! Likely, no one will punish you for that.
If “the time to accomplish is very tight,” maybe you should concentrate on the most critical areas and skip the rest. {PRIORITIZATION}
If you cannot skip any of the tasks, estimate the time you have, reduce the time needed for the tasks, and still add some buffer.
Without any buffer, it might be too risky. Also, plan checkups along the way. {CHECKPOINT, PROJECT: A PARAMEDIC APPROACH}
And the last, “the time is very tight,” is your judgment. What facts do you base it on?
Have you done such a project before, and do you have estimates for your personal or team’s productivity?
I suggest you estimate your productivity regularly.
{ANALOGY, TRACK PERFORMANCE, EXPERT}
Scheduling is not predicting—it is an attempt to decrease uncertainty by drawing a map of the coming journey. You work with available data and try to make the best of it. {ANALOGY, DATA, GIGO}
When you have no data, it will be mostly guesswork. And it would help if you had something to compare your guesswork to.
{PROJECT: A PARAMEDIC APPROACH, CALIBRATE YOUR PERCEPTION, GUESSWORK}
It is not a scheduling issue—it is the scoping one. You break down work there.
The rule here is simple: remain rational. {COMMON SENSE, ADEQUACY}
Splitting too much means spending much time on the process and arriving at many pieces that need coordination. Splitting too little means having less manageable things. Larger chunks mean less control. {SAMPLING PERIOD, CHECKPOINT}
An 8-80 rule exists: not smaller than one day and not larger than two weeks. It can give some idea, yet it is very general.
Ultimately, it depends on the planning horizon and the expected rate of changes.
Plan a project's year in months or seasons, a month in weeks, weeks in days, and days in hours.
If your product is a one-day session, then you might find it rational to plan everything down to a minute.
It is.
The approach is universal: you use common sense and an expert. Expert opinion usually helps. {COMMON SENSE, EXPERT}
What are the problems? For starters, it is finding an expert, as not all people with a diploma are equally good. {FINDING AN EXPERT, EXPERT VS. PROFESSIONAL, JANE JUDGES JILL}
Next, using an expert usually means spending resources; thus, be rational about what you get for your money.
The thing is universal (as in our discussion about contracts): you use common sense and an expert´s knowledge.
{COMMON SENSE, FINDING AN EXPERT, EXPERT VS. PROFESSIONAL}
Life benefits, talent, money, and other niceties are not distributed homogeneously in the world: there always are and will be haves and have-nots. {HETEROGENEITY}
The most intelligent way is to get into a lab that has no problems with funding. {ABUNDANCE OF RESOURCES, COMMON SENSE}
By doing so, you can observe and understand why they have no problems while their neighbors do.
However, you likely mean a different thing.
How do you ask enough yet not too much, and how do you ask not much but remain safe without ending up with too little?
There is no formula to inform you how much: you learn it by trial and error, and before acquiring expertise, you ask experts. {EXPERT, TRIAL AND ERROR, FAIL FORWARD}
It is also good to remember that in research, we often deal with “pseudomoney.”
{GRANTING IS NOT INVESTING, PSEUDOMONEY}
As we’ve discussed, having reserves is essential. They act as a safety net, protecting you from any unforeseen challenges that may (and will) arise.
Yet, nobody will grant you 20% extra if you mark it as “a contingency reserve.” Thus, you hide reserves in the other costs.
Next, “funding decisions are but educated guesses about the future of proposed research mostly based on a researcher’s past” (Nesterov, 2021). It is hard to say what “optimum” here is, as any board is a black box to a certain extent. What are their real priorities? {BLACK-BOX APPROACH}
Then, it is essential to remember that granting is not investing. People who give you money do not risk their own money, and they do not benefit from the successes. {GRANTING IS NOT INVESTING, PSEUDOMONEY}
Everything we do at work should satisfy the adequacy principle {ADEQUACY}.
Having somebody to consult on these questions in any organization is OK, as is having an expert’s opinion about budgets or contracts. {EXPERT, COMMON SENSE}
However, I strongly advocate that individuals at a high school or graduate level should receive fundamental training in project management and organizational behavior.
This understanding will not only boost their productivity but also equip them with the tools to navigate through the noise of new trends and buzzwords.
There are several points in the question.
First, you only know what the committee wants if you are on the committee and you decide. Then, you know why you support a particular application. Hopefully, you know. {INFORMATION ASYMMETRY}
If you are not a part of the committee, you can guess what the committee might want.
For instance, they might wish science to progress, in general, or in a particular field, or to award a specific subject, a specific lab, etc. They may want to grant people from a particular region or background.
So, the best proxy is to know somebody from the committee or somebody who successfully interacted with the committee, i.e., got money from it. {EXPERT}
Thus, your assumption that they want the projects "that can be fully accomplished" might be wrong. To find the truth, you need insiders.
Second, getting money, performing a project, and getting anything of value are three independent things that might overlap. {ENDPOINT TIERS}
One thing you might be certain of, though, is the need for resources. Research today cannot succeed without money, infrastructure, equipment, collaboration networks, and skilled personnel.
{ABUNDANCE OF RESOURCES}
Accurately? Nohow.
You can and should use advice from subject matter experts, and you might be thinking by analogy or using parameters you can estimate. However, novel things will always have a great degree of guesswork.
{GUESSWORK, EXPERT, FINDING AN EXPERT, ANALOGY, TRIAL AND ERROR}

Project scheduling is a vast knowledge area that is hard to squeeze into a paragraph. However, if we try, we must remember the following things.
First, you must understand what you will be doing in the project. You cannot schedule or budget something you do not understand—it will be useless. {ENDPOINT TIERS, LACK OF MOTIVATION}
Second, there are two opposite project scheduling approaches.
In traditional or predictive projects, you estimate the duration of each activity and sum the estimates to get the duration in days.
The different approach used in agile projects starts with the time frame (usually a month), and you estimate how many things you can accomplish during this time. With this approach, you don't assess activities in days; you estimate them in points of difficulty—story points. {STORY POINT}
You decide when to use which approach and can alternate them for different project parts.
New tasks benefit from setting a frame for them. Try to accomplish them during the frame (one day or one week, etc.), and at the end of the frame, feedback on that—lessons learned. With the knowledge gained, you can approach planning the new frame.
{IMPOSE CONSTRAINTS, FEEDBACK}
No one knows the future. Its estimation is always a guess with more or less uncertainty.
Having performed some tasks and having left the tracks, you can use the historical data to estimate the future better. {TRACK PERFORMANCE}
If the task is new, the uncertainty is always high, and your estimation will always be a guess. Make it as educated as you can. Try to find out similar projects or tasks to get some idea. {COMMON SENSE, ANALOGY}
Yet, if there is none, take the absolute minimum and maximum (in your opinion) of a parameter’s measurement and take the geometric mean of that – you will have at least some idea.
{GUESSWORK}
Why do we need any buffer or reserve in the first place? We need it because we do not know how long it will take to do something we have not done before.
Any estimate is our guess about the future, which is always uncertain. {BUFFER}
Whatever buffer we add to a new activity might still be less than enough or more than needed; we may also accomplish the work during the scheduled time without any buffer.
We cannot be 100% certain that the amount of buffer we take will be correct for a new activity.
Thus, there is a rule of thumb in traditional projects that the time buffer is 20% of the estimated length of the project. You estimate how long the project takes and add 20%; thus, if it is 40 days, then it is eight days.
The same practice concerns having buffers in large projects before any milestone—twenty percent. The practice, as we discussed, leads to over-padding of schedules.
What can help us estimate better? Learning about our productivity can help. We do it by working and tracking our performance. {TRACK PERFORMANCE}
Knowing what you can do and how long it will take is a necessary part of expertise; obtaining this knowledge always takes time. {EXPERT}
What helps keep durations within reasonable limits?
The market pressures. If a company does the same but longer, it will not have a competitive advantage over those who do the same faster.
Where these pressures do not exist, durations follow the trend of costs.
{PSEUDOMONEY, GRANTING IS NOT INVESTING}
The experience trumps theory. {COMMON SENSE}
However, unless you are in “a sprint” or in a predictive (traditional) project, you might think in a way, “the coming week – by half days, the next two – by days, the month after – by weeks, all the rest – by months.”
{SAMPLING PERIOD, CHECKPOINT, EXPERT, ADMINISTRATIVE OVERHEAD}
You are right: you rarely know what is behind the corner in many projects, research included.
Thus, you will change your scope during the project—possibly many times. As we discussed in the lecture on project changes, it is usual.
There are two things to remember.
First, add truly needed things, not something of marginal value.
Second, when adding stuff along the way, check how they affect other parameters of your project—account for the changes. {LEAVE TRACKS, GROUND RULES}
If you work for a customer and have a contract, the process to approach changes (and charge for them) must be in the contract from the start. {KAIROS}
You must agree on changes with the customer. As we discussed, projects will have a Change control board or, at least, a Change committee.
You mean the midpoint transition. And, yes, having more checkups helps. {CHECKPOINT, SAMPLING PERIOD}
As for being self-similar, it likely is.
We can make a thought experiment. If we have a month, we might not be active for a couple of weeks; if we have a week, we can skip a couple of days; if we have a day, maybe a couple of hours. But if we have a couple of hours, will we procrastinate? Very likely, if the task takes less than that (Parkinson’s law). {PROCRASTINATION}
When we have less time than needed, we do not squander it: there is not much to squander, and we are always in a hurry and under stress.
Many bosses habitually strain employees with huge workloads and limited time.
Such an approach might be efficient in the short term and only from a manager’s perspective. Yet, for an employee to live a work life as heroes of “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” does not sound inspiring.
Both procrastination and permanent strain are amiss.
The right approach is knowing your productivity {TRACK PERFORMANCE}, your work {ECPM}, and yourself {WHO AM I?}. Then, you will have fewer problems with motivation or burnout.
{LACK OF MOTIVATION}
The salience model we discussed works differently: it helps you see how things are.
If a powerful person wants something urgently and has a right to demand it, how will you “move” her?
You cannot easily take away the power or legitimacy.
The trick you can try is not seeing the urgency: you might become unavailable, so, technically, you did not know that the request was urgent; thus, you did not perform because you did not know.
Yet, the approach can backfire, so understand the potential impact of what you are doing.
{COMMON SENSE, ADEQUACY, POSITIONAL POWER, COMMUNICATION PRINCIPLES}
It is possible to overdo anything.
Planning and communication are skills developed through working and reflecting on the work done.
If you have no expertise, data, or expert to consult, start with guesses and see how the approach works.
Take a six-month (130 work days) project as an example. Allocating 10% of the total project time for planning might be excessive, while 2% could be too little.
A more reasonable approach could be to spend 4% of the project time—roughly five work days (a workweek)—on planning. Spend five days on planning the six-month project and see if it works.
"Too much time spent on" something is when the process takes resources yet does not fulfill its purpose.
Thus, the resource exchange is not worth it if the communication takes time but does not decrease uncertainty concerning your goals, work, or team members.
How do you know it?
Summarize the progress you have gained during the meeting, talking, or corresponding with others. It can be one or two sentences. If you cannot summarize, there was likely no signal in the communication, and you "spent too much time" on it, even if it was half an hour.
As to the uncertainty, of course, you have to accept that uncertainty will exist, and no matter how much time you spend planning, something might surprise you. It is OK.
{GUESSWORK, ADMINISTRATIVE OVERHEAD, EXPERT, EXPLORE AND EXPLOIT, TRIAL AND ERROR, FAIL FORWARD, COMMUNICATION PRINCIPLES, SIGNAL/NOISE}
The technique is a part of our communication repertoire, aiming to decreaseuncertainty and offset information asymmetry regarding a particular situation. {INFORMATION ASYMMETRY, COMMUNICATION PRINCIPLES}
What amount of specificity?
The adequate amount. The amount that helps you understand the problem thoroughly or moves you to the next level of questioning if you still need to understand it. {ADEQUACY}
The method works as follows: You ask “Why?” and get the response; if something is unclear, clarify it for yourself, asking other helping questions: What is it? How does it work? How much of it is needed? What are the alternatives? What will happen if we cannot get it working?
Then, you continue with why-s.
Remember, though, that it is not an interrogation, so let it breathe.
This technique can help the interviewee better understand the problem herself.
Any plan is a compromise between resources spent on planning now and the benefit you expect to obtain through the planning in the future. {ADMINISTRATIVE OVERHEAD, SAMPLING PERIOD}
Your budget builds on the project’s scope.
The more detailed your scope is, the better you understand what to do; the better you understand, the more accurate estimates you will get. And, also, the more time you spend on the procedure.
Meticulous attention to detail is crucial when planning a business, as these “decimals” might make or break your business. If you do not have abundant resources, of course. {ABUNDANCE OF RESOURCES}
In science, you are not constrained by the “decimal points,” as you mainly deal with pseudomoney.
However, knowing your scope in detail might also be beneficial: it will improve your understanding of the required work.
Remember to leave tracks so that you can benefit from your experience in the future.
{TRACK PERFORMANCE, PSEUDOMONEY, SIGNAL/NOISE}
Remember, you did not just fall from the Moon to HY. There was some agreement with somebody at the University of Helsinki, and before having arrived, you should have had some idea of what you would be doing and why.
If you arrive with no such ideas, you better have personal goals to help you align your behavior with the new circumstances—what do you want to achieve in life? {ENDPOINT TIERS, WHO AM I?}
And you need a person who knows the environment well. {EXPERT}
Returning to a plan needed for a four-year Ph.D. project, the question of “how long to spend” means how detailed the plan should be for what period, and finding the Goldilocks way of planning requires experience.
Refrain from spending too much time planning something that will soon become obsolete, yet do not rush to work without answering all the necessary questions. {KAIROS, COMMON SENSE, OVERHEAD, FAILING FORWARD}
In a Ph.D. project, you do not plan four years in detail—you plan these years roughly.
Your initial planning will involve understanding the context, its constraints, and the leading players, building relations with them, and understanding their expectations. You can do it in a couple of weeks.
Sometimes, information owners will not want to share all the critical details with you. Thus, do your best to decrease uncertainty as much as you can.
{PROJECT: A PARAMEDIC APPROACH, COMMUNICATION PRINCIPLES}
If we dismiss the possibility that “such complexity,” i.e., the fast production of changes, difficulties, and plentitude of templates, is simply an adaptive feature of the diverse collection of organisms found in offices and headquarters of large organizations and imagine all these truly necessary, try to answer the following questions.
First, what endpoints does each of the templates serve?
Second, what added value does the new template provide over the old?
And third, what will happen if this or that template disappears?
I suggest asking these questions to anyone who wants to give you an additional workload.
{CRAPPY JOINT, CRAPPY BOSSES, ENDPOINT TIERS, ECPM, EFFECTIVE MANAGERS}
You can try.
Moreover, I recommend testing any system you assume will work if needed.
For example, will the trade union pay you when you lose your job? Will they provide you with a lawyer when you have a dispute at work? By testing it beforehand, you are doing risk management.
From personal experience, I would say that getting help from a trade union might be more challenging than regularly paying membership fees to them.
{TRIAL AND ERROR, FAIL FORWARD, EXPLORE AND EXPLOIT, COMMON SENSE}
Knowing beforehand what the ideal point will be is hard. It might be more rational to adjust your plan once you know how much money you have.
When submitting, it is reasonable to check the data from the grants already awarded and see the order of the magnitude. {ANALOGY, COMMON SENSE}
Also, remember that granting is not investing: people who decide on a grant do not risk their money or benefit from your success.
Thus, understanding the board's criteria and priorities can be a challenge, as any board is a black box.
However, there can be a way to shed light on this: connect with individuals familiar with the grant board or who have successfully received money from that board.
{GRANTING IS NOT INVESTING, PSEUDOMONEY, BLACK-BOX APPROACH, EXPERT, GUESSWORK}
You do not convince them to do that.
Agile is a way to manage projects when you explore the best way to work in parallel with doing this work.
Research can benefit from agile, as research is an activity in which one thing is contingent on another, and thus, “a clear plan of execution” is often impossible, at least in the long term.
Anyone who has done any research is aware of that.
Yet those who award money may be unaware of that or, acting as judges, have forgotten their experience.
Thus, knowledge is the key. You must know what the decision-makers of that “funding body” value. {VALUE, ENDPOINT TIERS, TRIAL AND ERROR}
For some decision-makers, the most significant factor could be the research group you belong to or a specific collaborator who endorses your work.
In the absence of a clear understanding of the decision-making process, do not overemphasize the project’s ‘agility.’ Instead, consider presenting it as an option alongside a traditional schedule.
{GRANTING IS NOT INVESTING, EXPLORE AND EXPLOIT}
If you designate certain expenses as “reserve costs,” you will not get them.
As for the sum you might count on, it all boils down to two numbers: how much money somebody is willing to spend on your research and how much you need.
Having a lot of resources does not hurt.
{ABUNDANCE OF RESOURCES, JUST IN CASE}
In general, granting is not investing. You do not need to return the money at all. Thus, do not worry: try to understand the game’s rules, find someone who knows, and use them as a vehicle. {EXPERT, GRANTING IS NOT INVESTING}
Granting is not investing.
People in granting foundations do not risk their own money, and they do not expect to benefit from your success. You do not need to return the money at all. It is an entirely different phenomenon. {GRANTING IS NOT INVESTING, PSEUDOMONEY}
It is hard or impossible to say what is “optimum” here, as any board is a black box to a certain extent. {BLACK-BOX APPROACH}
What are their real priorities? It is often the game: “I ask for more because you will give me less, as you know that I asked for more…”
So, do not worry: try to understand the game’s rules, find someone who knows, and use them to get info or as a vehicle in a collaboration.
{EXPERT, INFORMATION ASYMMETRY}
If somebody asks, “Why this?” you answer, “Because of this, this and that…”
After all, you need this extra to perform the work better and protect yourself from uncertainty.
{BUFFER, UNCERTAINTY}
“Mandatory” sounds unsavory. I would recommend at least considering the effects of uncertainty on your objectives.
Treat it like a way to train your brain—develop scenarios. But take it easy. Do not sit with a concerned team of concerned members and frowningly engage in some unpleasant activity you must go through as if it were an unpleasant medical procedure. Play with the ideas and enjoy it. What if this happens? What if that?
How detailed it should become will depend on the project.
{EXPECTANCY, GUESSWORK, COMMON SENSE, ADEQUACY, INFORMATION ASYMMETRY}

01. Good strategies and practice for a new project plan?

02. What is the best approach to planning more efficiently? Sometimes, I spend a lot of time planning. How can I ensure that I spend less time planning and more time performing other activities for the project?

03. Does even a small project need a thoroughly written document of most things you brought up in the course, or how do you manage a tiny project that stands independently without being part of a more significant project?

04. What could be a “light version” of the project management plan? The complete one seems heavy for most minor projects, especially if you are the only team member.

05. How do we avoid/ minimize planning fallacy?

06. Sometimes, I overestimate my efficiency with tasks. How do I manage this?

07. How do you schedule your week if your most productive hours change daily or seasonally?

08. I guess budgeting and scheduling are very interlinked, depending on the other. Are these usually done simultaneously?

09. If the time to accomplish a particular project is very tight, is it possible not to add the buffers (project buffer and milestone buffer) to the schedule? If not, is there any reason for planning the project with the buffers but ensuring they will be used to finish the task?

10. Scheduling a project requires tremendous effort and is much more complex than I imagined. Sometimes, we do not have enough time to plan a proper schedule. Is there any faster way to predict a required time, or is it always guesswork?

11. Scheduling: How do you decide how much to break down the project into smaller pieces?

12. If there is no budgeting experience, is it reasonable to craft a budget and then run it through with a professional?

13. Is it better to hire some specialists to make the budget?

14. Budgeting: How do you handle competition for funding? What is the balance between being optimistic and realistic?

15. Costs are not always definite when we apply for grants. Sometimes, experiments are repeated twice because something goes wrong or extra travel needs arise. Could one estimate the costs in the application higher than they might be?

16. Is there room for (should there be) several project managers in a lab, e.g., one for every project or simply one helping with all projects?

17. How should we estimate the success rate of a particular project, especially when applying for some funding? The review committee must want projects that can be fully accomplished.

18. The idea is to create something unique that has not been done before. Since it is a new and unique work, there will be many unknown/unpredictable areas. So, how can we design accurately and adequately the time and cost for this kind of novel idea?

19. What are the strategies and practices for dealing with the timeline of a new project?

20. How do you approximate durations of activities you have no experience with yet?

21. How would we estimate how much buffer a project might require?

22. Are there some “rules of thumb” regarding what detail projects should be planned, or is this something you learn as you gain more experience?

23. Having a too strict scope for a project could mean missing out on important findings because it was not within the project's scope to do some experiments. How does one define the scope when one does not know beforehand what would be important and what not?

24. Does the work time usage equilibrium remain a fractal phenomenon even after splitting the schedule into smaller milestones to counter the balance?

25. Can and should you move definitive stakeholders away towards other stakeholder positions for the greater good of the project?

26. What is too much time spent on communication, and what is too little when planning a project? Is it also possible to overdo this planning step? Must we accept a certain level of uncertainty?

27. What is the amount of specificity we should expect from answers to the “Why?” question?

28. How detailed should a budget be? Should I (for example) give separate estimates for different lab experiments or bunch them all under a broader category of “lab experiments”?

29. How long should the planning phase take for the whole project? For example, I arrived in Finland without a plan for my Ph.D. Thus, I needed to work on it as soon as I arrived in Helsinki. From the total time of 4 years, how long should I have dedicated myself to the planning step?

31. I wonder if I can get help from the university's HR staff if I ever need to budget for a big project, including salary, costs, etc.

32. Is there an optimum budget proposal for a grant balancing an appealingly small budget and a secure hefty budget? How would you recognize this ideal point?

33. How do you convince funding bodies to fund agile or extreme projects? They usually prefer a clear and concise plan of execution.

34. How can you find out how much reserve costs you can add?

35. We need to hide the reserve budget in the project budget. But what if the investor asks why you need that much money? Would it be bad for the decision if they felt the reserve was hidden in the project budget?

36. Should a risk register be mandatory in every project plan?