Editing UNITA Agile Management Guide (section)

== Context and objectives ==

=== Context and necessity ===

The updated Management Guide has beed developed considering that:  
* The first phase of the European Universities Alliance UNITA (Nov. 2020- Oct. 2023) was concerned with initiating and setting up a functional framework for alliance cooperation, integration and governance from a managerial perspective. The alliance comprised 6 partner higher education institutions. As this was the initial phase, adjustments and changes were frequent in terms of role definition and allocation, management flows and interactions among responsible parties. 
*The second phase of the EUA UNITA (November 2023- 2027, ongoing) is focused on deepening the integration of the alliance, consolidating it, while simultaneously extending it to 10 partner universities, 2 university associated partners and 1 partner in the form of our legal entity UNITA GEIE. The focus of this phase turns to seamless processes and agile approaches to management of teams and activities.  
* UNITA's management does not refer solely to the projects which are central to our alliance, supported under the umbrella of the Erasmus+ European Universities Initiative, but also to what we have defined as the UNITA constellation of projects. This concept relates to complementary projects tackling specific matters of interest to our alliance in a more extensive manner while also being linked to the EUI projects of our alliance.  
* The initial six founding partners of UNITA have created a legal entity under the form of a European Economic Interest Grouping, to which the new full partners will adhere in the second phase of the alliance. The UNITA Universitas Montium EEIG is a full partner of the current EUI project of the alliance. The role of the legal entity is to contribute to the alliance's sustainability.  
*The UNITA Alliance enlargement from 6 to 13 partners requires a disciplined, efficient and transparent working method while avoiding useless formalities or unclear processes. Agile methodology for project management, with some adaptations, can provide an efficient working method and mindset for our challenging objectives in the next 4 years.

=== Objectives of the UNITA Agile Management Guide ===

# Highlight the relevant managerial aspects of the alliance's EUI project, applicable as well to all UNITA constellation projects.
# Set the rules and responsibilities of the partners for the purpose of ensuring a good quality and progress of the work envisioned in the UNITA actions.
# Summarize all the required knowledge for an agile management of the project.
# Contain all information related to the management structure, processes, documentation, collaboration tools to be used, reporting procedures, etc.
# Develop a set of basic principles for the management of UNITA cooperation overall.

=== Relation to Other Project Documents ===

In the event of discrepancy between documents, this Management Guide is overruled by the Grant Agreement (s, valid for each project implemented by the alliance) including Annexes and the Consortium Agreement with possible addenda.