Smart4All Internal Note

SELFSUSTAINED CROSS-BORDER CUSTOMIZED

CYBERPHYSICAL SYSTEM EXPERIMENTS
FOR CAPACITY BUILDING AMONG
EUROPEAN STAKEHOLDERS

The Role of SMART4ALL Coaches

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1 SMART4ALL COACHES
1.1 Purpose and Scope
The purpose of this document is to provide guidelines about the technical, business, and ethics
coaches of SMART4ALL. This document is an unofficial document intended to be used as an internal
guide for SMART4ALL consortium members.
In general, the main goals of the SMART4ALL coaching services is to support and monitor the
granted open calls in their technical and business-related activities. More specifically:
 The role of the technical coaches is to further optimize the technical/product impact of each
individual PAE.
 The role of the business coaches is to further optimize the economic impact of each individual
PAE.
 The role the ethics coaches is to raise awareness (not necessary to address) to the winners of
the open calls about any ethics issue that might arise during the execution of the PAE.

1.2 Schedule
Before the official start date of each PAE, a technical, business, and ethics coach will be assigned to
each PAE. The coordination team of SMART4ALL (Michael Huebner, Christos Antonopoulos and
Georgios Keramidas) will be responsible to assign the most appropriate technical and business
coaches to each funded PAE based on the application domain of the PAE as well as the expertise of
the coaches. The partners MARGARITA and UPZ (as part of their involvement in T8.8) will be
responsible for the selection of the ethics coaches (if an ethics coach is necessary for a particular
PAE).

1.3 Profile of Coaches

The SMART4ALL coaches must have a proven expertise in one of the four pillars of SMART4ALL.
1.3.1 Technical Coaches
The technical coaches must have either an industrial or an academic background and he/she must have
a practical understanding (with at least 10 years experience) of the technical challenges in at least one
thematic pillar of SMART4ALL. No previous experience in coaching or mentoring activities is
required.
1.3.2 Business Coaches
The business coaches must have a strong academic background and at least 5-years experience in
industry. They must be familiar with processes related to one of the following areas: product
development, strategic planning, market development and investor readiness management. No
previous experience in coaching or mentoring activities is required.
1.3.3 Ethics Coaches
The ethics coaches must have experience in the areas of the areas of data protection regulations and
GDBR compliance policies. No previous experience in coaching or mentoring activities is required.

1.4 Practical Guidelines

As noted, the role of the coaches is twofold: i) to help the PAE to achieve its goals and ii) to
monitor the execution of the PAE and report to the SMART4ALL management team any
significant deviations from the initial plan (e.g., from the submitted open call proposal).
More specific guidelines are presented below:

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  The coach should carefully read the submitted open call proposal
 After 2-3 weeks from the start of the PAE, each coach should arrange a telco with the PAE
team in order to formulate a set of milestones that need to be achieved during the execution of
the PAE
 This set of milestones needs to be aligned with the existing workplan of the PAE
 The coach can propose and discuss with the PAE team modifications to the existing workplan
(based on his experience). This is the most important part of the role of the coach.
 Apart from the initial coaching session, at least 1 additional session must be arranged for the
KTE PAEs and at least 2 additional sessions must be arranged for the FTTE and CTTE PAE.
 In the additional sessions, the coach must assess the progress of the PAE wrt. the formulated
milestones.
 Apart from the coaching sessions, the coach must support the PAE via email.
 In general, the coach must also support the PAE through his experience and network.
 The coach must create and maintained an online file (in the SMART4ALL repository) where
he can keep track of the formulated milestones, the progress of the PAE, and any other useful
comment.
 The coach can decide the frequency of coaching sessions and the most suitable way to
communicate with the PAE team.
 The coach must keep the information of the PAE as confidential.
 The coach must support and guide the PAEs towards the compilation of the project’s KPIs
 For the ethics coaches, MARGARITA and UPZ are responsible to perform a first screen of
the PAE application and assess if the particular PAE requires the assignment of an ethics
coach.

1.5 Pool of Coaches

Each SMART4ALL consortium member must nominate at least 2 coaches (a technical and/or a
business and/or an ethics one). With respect to SMART4ALL GA, this coaching activity belongs to
Task 6.6 (in which all partners participate).
A coach can belong to any of the four thematic Task Forces and SME Task Force is considered as
vertical since it concerns all four thematic Task Forces. The Task Force leaders are responsible to
coordinate the selection of coaches and assess the proposed candidates.
A specific on-line document has been created where all SMART4ALL partners must provide their
nominations for technical / business / ethics coaches.
The on-line document can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1g95JCLWmeExUFajGknRQ1BrLY2TS2QWsLqewea1Z-
p4/edit?usp=sharing