Episode 039 - Case Study - Phase 5 Closure - Elephants and Bees

This is the fifth and final episode in a project management series I set up to help leaders like you with the terminology and applications of project management for conservation research and projects. Project management is a lot like the scientific process is similar to… instead of having a hypothesis to test you have a set of objectives to accomplish. The best part of project management is that there is an end to the project. It’s the defining feature of a project - All projects have a final due date. If you are one of those people who love accomplishing something then project management might be for you because as you know finishing something feels really good! You can find the project management series by going to episodes 023, 029, 036, and 038 on the projects for wildlife.com website. I created this series because to address a fundamental flaw of conservation research and something that holds us back from accomplishing what we are trying to achieve and this is it.. … it’s that recommendations from conservationist research get stuck in papers and never find their way out of a paper and actually implemented. As you may already know, many times these research papers are full of amazing mitigation recommendations that were proposed and agreed upon by all the stakeholders... and then nothing happens after the paper is published. There are lots of reasons why, and really this area is not well studied… although it happens ALL the time. It’s my belief that we can use project management techniques and tools to take those recommendations out of the paper and implement them in a way that will benefit humans and wildlife. Instead of creating the dream… let’s make the dream reality and we can do it with project management. This series focused on human-wildlife conflict, coexistence, and projects that have taken different mitigations and applied them for the benefit of both humans and wildlife. From lions, to wolves, bears, and now elephants you have seen how a large variety of people from government to academia and from rancher to advocate there are a lot of people involved in finding solutions. It’s my hope that over the course of the last four episodes that the use of project management tools and strategies can easily be used take recommendations in a paper and apply them and grow ideas and collaborations. This is my favorite phase of project management, the closure. All projects should end with a celebration!