Putting academia and industry side by side in terms of project management I tend to find many similarities in what I have experienced in both fields. In terms of academic research, making a Gnatt chart becomes unclear in some instances because the research may not end during certain periods and become longer than initially expected compared to industry work. In industry work, a project has a clear definition of what the objective is, such as repair of equipment, consulting with contractors, and expecting certain steps to be done. The objective is clear, making the end very defined. In terms of school work, such as a project that spans months, it seems more applicable to project management. Several people would be involved, as well as deliverables that would need to be made in order to keep the project in line with the final objective. Morphing this type of project management to academia would be to readjust the timeline due to the nature of having certain items become longer and shorter while setting some deliverables that would need to be completed. An aspect such as cost would also be considered, such as not having access to a certain instrument that would be needed to complete this research. Project management would be very different if applied to academia, but it would work with a couple tweaks in order to accommodate the field.

When examining the differences between industry and academia, the one thing that jumps out the most is the end goal of each.

In academia, you're working to advance the field. The goal is ambiguous. You're performing research to prove or disprove a question that no one has answered before. With that much uncertainty, it's difficult to make deadlines that would make sense. Sometimes, you have no idea when a certain task will end. Its so much easier in academia for things to go wrong as opposed to industry.

In industry, the end goal is very clear cut: profit. Every task done in industry has the ultimate goal of making a profit. With such a clear-cut goal like that, it easier to set deadlines for people and actually stick to them. Efficiency is everything, which is why Gantt charts, WBS, etc. are so important and utilized in industry.

If project management tools and strategies were implemented in academia, it might increase efficiency. However, there will almost always be an expectation of things not going according to plan. In the "Planning Phase" of project management, one critical thing to do is to get a real idea of the time each executing task will take and decide the critical path. This is done by either referencing past project management tools or by talking to the people actually performing the work. However, in research it is hard to give a defined length of time for an experiment because there's often no documentation or past references that will tell you exactly how long each task takes unless you are extremely experienced in the field. That will be up to the experiment and part of the learning process if figuring that out exactly. The lack of defined areas of time in the planning phase will lead to lags ad failures in the executing phase.

The differences you've pointed out between industry and academia in how they handle projects is very accurate. While academia doesn't use project management as much as businesses do, it can help alot if researchers tweak these methods to fit their projects. How much they do this depends on the research environment, available resources, and the project itself. I think with academia focusing more on teamwork and real-world results, we might see more project management tools in research labs in the future. 

Although academia and industry are quite different, they both use project management strategies to reach their end goal. It is true that in industry the strategies are more structured with feasible deliverables, unlike academia or research. However, I do think that academia has its own strategies that it follows, such as clinical trials. For many research labs, clinical trials are conducted to reach an answer. To conduct a clinical trial, many project management strategies need to be taken to ensure that the trials run smoothly without any hindrance. However, the research aspect after clinical trials in academia is where project management strategies are difficult to implement. When it comes to writing the paper, the results may not make sense or may be inaccurate which would through a big obstacle in the process, causing a change in the timeline of the process. For Acamdeia, the planning phase would differ quite a bit from the industry since relying on the Gantt chart would not be ideal. This is because Gantt charts are very structured with very specific deliverables that would not work with the given unknowns in the academic field. However, having some sort of project management strategy is important in both the industry and academia to ensure that the end goal is achievable. 

Hello Cruz, you've raised an important question! Your point about the relationship between research environments and organizational techniques is very thought-provoking. I think while academic labs do sometimes incorporate planning tools like Gantt charts when there are external financial commitments, it's not always standard practice because of the investigative essence of academic work -it often aims to explore new frontiers of knowledge, making it hard to fit into preset deadlines or budgets. On the other hand, some projects which involve the need to meet milestones may benefit from a more structured approach to planning and executing tasks. In academia, we often prioritize scholarly freedom and flexible research paths, which might clash with traditional project management. However, in well-funded and larger labs, you might find roles dedicated solely to overseeing project logistics. I think the choice to implement managerial strategies has to be adapted to fit the unique needs and objectives of each lab.