Sub-Groups

Depending on overall team size it often makes sense to form sub-groups that can collaborate on specific project objectives. An advantage of forming sub-groups is that collaborative exchanges tend to be more efficient. By narrowing the scope of disciplinary focus, teams can hone in on specific project goals and achieve research milestones more rapidly than they might in larger teams. Small groups also tend to be more adaptable to change and can respond more nimbly to any unexpected shifts in research priorities than larger teams.

A potential disadvantage to forming sub-groups is that some people may feel they need to join every sub-group so that they do not feel left out of any team exchanges. It is also possible for sub-groups to become too narrow in their focus, cutting them off from cross-disciplinary exchanges that might have otherwise enhanced opportunities for new collaborative ideas to emerge. Below we offer recommendations for how best to navigate the formation, scope and content of sub-group activities within the lifespan of a collaborative project.

Formation

Discussions about the possibility for sub-group formation should occur early in the project lifecycle. Rather than trying to proscribe what project components might benefit from the formation of sub-groups, which will be difficult to do before the work has begun, the group should instead establish structures to recognize when the time might be right to consider breaking into smaller teams.

Here are some signs to watch for that might indicate the time is right for the formation of subgroups:

  • Multiple approaches for one research problem: It is common to have different types of methodological expertise spread out across a collaborative effort, all of which are aimed at answering the same fundamental research question. For example, an overarching research goal may be to quantify precipitation totals over a specific region, and there may be multiple teams each running their own model to generate these estimates. Here it makes sense for these teams to meet in subgroups to compare results and share algorithms in the hopes of finding which model performs best.

  • Large group meeting inefficiencies: Meeting with everyone in attendance (so called "all-hands meetings") must by their nature be fairly broad in scope in order to make time to cover everyone's work. If you notice groups needing more time to delve into details, it might be time to form a sub-group so that these people can break off and focus on a specific topic without doing so a the expense of the time for other meeting activities.

  • Opportunistic community engagement: Suppose one of the research topics within a collaborative effort will be the subject of a global workshop several months from now. It might make sense to form a sub-group on this topic with a specific goal of producing a synthesis paper or presentation so as to enhance engagement with the broader community.

HiMAT subgroups

HiMAT experimented with three different sub-groups over the span of the 3 year effort:

  • Precipitation products: intercomparison of the numerous existing precipitation products for High Asia
  • Snow products: sharing knowledge on modeling snow fall and snow accumulation
  • Total Water Storage: compiling all existing hydrological model outputs of water budgets in the HMA region and validated these against remote sensing observations.

A common themes across these 3 sub-groups was an intention to do robust model intercomparison by minimizing as many sources of discrepancy between the models. For example, this meant using similar model inputs and parameters whenever possible, so that diffences between models could be attributed to factors other than forcing data. Each of the three sub-groups had active membership of around 15-20 people, which we found to be a manageable size. All sub-groups had regular zoom meetings held in addition to the larger team calls, and two of the three sub-groups gathered together in person once during the 3 year project.

Structure

Sub-groups provide opportunities for experimenting with collaborative structures at a smaller scale than those that occur across the full team. We recommend replicating some of the full team administrative roles, for example science team lead, within the scope of the smaller groups. This provides opportunities to gain experience in leadership and coordination roles, and also helps people interact within already existing administrative structures. We note that our most successful sub-groups have had a dedicated person who coordinates the overall activities and helps provide a vision of big-picture scientific goals. We also advocate for empowering people at all different career stages within the broader team to take on administrative roles within the sub-groups.