Results Overview

These pages present the result of a survey distributed to the digital research technical professional (dRTP) community at the University of Sheffield in June and July 2026.

The survey was posted in the University of Sheffield RSE Slack, and presentations were given to several of the centralised dRTP teams at the university (e.g. the RSE team, the R&I team in central IT service, Data connect team) to encourage participation.

The Survey

The survey was broken up into 3 main parts:

  1. Work context - Information about the number and duration of projects being undertaken by the respondents, as well as the team size and make up for those projects.

  2. Project management practices - Information about the how often the respondents encounter the listed aspects of project management in their role, the strategies they use to mitigate these aspects, and the perceived impact on the project if these aspects are not managed.

  3. Demographic information - Information about the respondents. Specifically their role, experience and seniority. Information about gender identity and ethic group was also collected, but only as a means to form diverse focus groups for follow up.

The survey codebook details the specific questions asked, and the response options. A PDF version of the survey is also available.

The Respondents

In total 15 people filled out the survey, detailing how their usage and views on the aspects of project management and the accompanying strategies. Of those 15:

  • All were in some kind of centralised dRTP team (i.e. none were dRTPs embedded in a research team)

  • The majority (12) were RSEs.

  • 5 were in a senior or leadership role.

  • 9 had five or fewer years of experience in a primarily dRTP role, while 2 had fifteen or more years of experience.

Survey data

Raw data (TSV format) and Cleaned data (parquet format) are both available for download.
These datasets have had the responses from the demographic information section of the survey removed to preserve respondent anonymity.

Citing this work

The survey and data are both available in ORDA: 10.15131/shef.data.34032759

If you reference or use the survey or the data in your work, please cite them as:

Brady, D. (2026). Exploring the usage of project management practices among digital research technical professionals (dRTPs) at the University of Sheffield - Survey [Dataset]. The University of Sheffield. https://doi.org/10.15131/SHEF.DATA.34032759