Overview
In 2023, I started working as the Project Manager at the Geospatial Analysis & Mapping Laboratory (GAMLab) at The University of Colorado Denver. The GAMLab, which had been around for 5 years, had only taken on a select few clients due to the pandemic. The Department of Geography and Environmental Science at CU Denver hoped that the Lab would become a space for professional and academic development for students, a kind of geospatial consultancy catering to private, public, and institutional clients.
The Challenge
When I started at the GAMLab, we had a physical space and a mandate, but only one active client and a single student worked for us. The lab director, Mandy Rees, started work simultaneously. We set to work: Mandy found us clients and onboarded students, and I developed standard operating procedures and put a project management framework in place.
The Solution
I created a Team Project Management document in Coda in just one month. This document has become a central hub for tracking project progress, note-keeping, and providing a high-level management overview of our projects. Its success has even led to its adoption as the primary project management tool at the UW Madison Cartography Lab, a prestigious academic mapping lab with a history dating back to 1953.
Key Features
- Automated Project Creation
- Notes for projects are available to all student workers in GAMLab (adjustable for NDA projects)
- Hour logging tied to specific projects
- Document backend which stores project data in relational data tables (like MS Access)
- Data can be referenced in other documents to create income forecasting models and executive dashboards
Gallery
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