Working with R&D Colleagues in a Rather Distracted Time

Get those scientists some focus time!

“Have you worked with R&D” – My client asked with a smirk.

“Yes, for about 10 years, since I started. In the R&D IT department.”

“So you know the specialities.”

“I think so…”

This is how our series of team workshops with a Lab Automation team began. The “specialities” my client was talking about were specifically around the “Scientific Mindset”. Gathering facts, creating a hypothesis, experimenting, generating data, and either disposing of the results or continuing to use them. If you think about it, this aligns perfectly with agile project management.

And a little bit of creative chaos, focus on the science, being a bit annoyed by all the administrative work the management is requesting. And asking for as little friction as possible.

This sounds a bit like I am attacking my R&D colleagues. It is rather an attempt at understanding the characteristics of the scientists and surrounding teams, which helps us work together. A little bit like the stereotypes that consultants live in slide decks. A generalisation, just helping to give a bit of direction for people engaging with the R&D community for the first time.

Once these “prejudices”, if you will, are spoken out loud, they can be addressed as part of the project team. Like my team lead – a scientist – said for one endeavour: let us not take the scientific approach here, let us not be perfectly fact-based and 100% thought through, but aim to get closer to the result we want.

With R&D being an essential part of many complex and regulated industries, delivering new innovations into the market, most colleagues are right to ask for less friction and more time to focus on scientific work. Supporting functions (Regulatory, Safety, IT and the like) have the responsibility to design processes and products with this goal in mind.

A Relict from the Past, a Tool of Focus – the Lab Notebook

A good example to think about is the paper lab journal. This document, lying in the lab for each scientist, provides the minimum amount of friction you can think of. Almost like a blank page, following some Good Documentation Practices, the scientist focuses on their work and captures their insights. Sketches, data and insights between the lines can be jotted down quickly, and experiments can continue. It is also an instrument of focus. No notifications, no distractions.

In contrast, look at modern Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) solutions, many of which we have had the pleasure to implement. Whilst we understand that a company needs accessibility of data, especially for legal and compliance reasons but also for sharing, those systems run in the digital workspace. This means constant distraction is present. It also “feels” more formal to write something into an electronic, audit-trailed system. The “quick sketch” very likely involves a photo, scan and upload to this system, maybe with a bit of OCR. The advantages of those systems – linking raw experiment data, traceability, sharing across departments and retaining scientific information – need to outweigh the distractions.

What is the Solution?

Design the ELN with the Paper Lab Journal and focused lab work in mind.

Just because there is a fancy new feature doesn’t mean it has to be activated right from the beginning. Engage with the scientific community and ask for their needs – not requirements. Maybe they need automation of data ingestion before they need a fancy user interface? Also, think about agentic AI coming soon. When chat interfaces and agents replace our UI, what would the digital personal assistant of the scientist be? What would it do for them? Creating a persona or a team of assistants will likely help you create a modern ELN ecosystem.

And provide a platform for honest feedback, so the scientist can give you the real value of the software you have developed.