Digital project management 101: Getting your project off the starting blocks

Carolyn Royston, IWM & Charlotte Sexton, NG

Museums and the Web 2012

• Can you tell us who you are and where you’re from

• Briefly what you’re working on that relates to this workshop, and what you hope to go away with from this session

To get us started

• Build confidence in managing a digital project

• Ask the right questions to ensure success

• Troubleshoot some real-life issues

• How to keep your project on track

• Manage senior management expectations

• Work collaboratively across departments and with external organisations

• And anything else that comes up...

What this workshop is all about:

Here’s a bit about us and our organisations....

Before we get going

Imperial War Museums

• Oldest film archive

• Second largest sound archive after the BBC

• Over 11 million photographs

• Second largest contemporary art collection in the UK after Tate

• Millions of documents, diaries, papers

• 140,000 large objects

IWM Collection

National Gallery

• Collection tells a story of Western European painting from 13th – 19th Centuries

• Small collection containing 2,500 works

• Some of the world’s most iconic masterpieces from Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ to Leonardo di Vinci’s ‘Virgin of the Rocks’

National Gallery Collection

• Supportive session

• Share openly and respect everyone’s contributions

• Confidentiality

• All from very different organisations with unique issues but similar challenges

• No right answers – but there are some building blocks and strategies which we can all commonly use

• Questions welcome throughout

Ground rules

• Methodology

• Communicator

• Organised

• Consistent

• Can see the whole picture

• Manage pressure and deliver to deadlines

What makes a good Project Manager ?

• Technology meets low digital literacy

• Deadlines

• Speed of digital vs non-digital projects

• People put off by technical language/jargon

• Cross departmental – different ambitions and agendas

• Resources required from across organisation

• Part of wider programme of activity, not separate

What are some of the challenges of managing a digital project in a museum or gallery?

• In any given project, there a number of components which will need to be defined before you can begin.

• What do you think those components might be?

• Define the project

• Budget

• Resources

• Roles and Responsibilities

• Timing and Schedule

• Evaluation

• Communication

• Manage Risk

Before you start your project

Wartime social survey: Information gathering in wartime Britian, UK, 1944

How do I fill in the gaps?

Methodology and approaches:

• Prince2

• Agile

• Waterfall

Project Management methodologies

Prince Albert

G6537

Prince2

• A project management methodology that is based on organisational structure i.e. People have defined roles on the board

• Relies heavily on detailed documentation e.g. PID, business case, risk management, QA

• Very business-focussed

• Structured in terms of phasing of projects

• Massive scope, only likely to use a fraction of tools for your project

What is Prince2

Pros

• A defined organisational structure for the project management team

• Very structured approach to project delivery

• Brief written outlining what the project is attempting to achieve and the business justification for doing it – all sign up to this

• Team structure should provide support for PM

Cons

• Can be overwhelming for museum needs

• Very rigid approach

• Project board needs careful management

• Danger can be that methodology becomes more important than the project itself

Prince2

A Recruit joins the Army

© IWM (H 17182)

Agile

• An iterative, more agile approach to project management

• Work in shorter sprints to enable feedback and iteration

• Breaks project down into smaller segments

• Additional documentation as in Prince2 also required e.g project scope, budget etc

What is Agile?

Agile

Launch

Pros

• Shorter sprints of work

• Failure can happen in more manageable and survivable scale

• Able to iterate and feedback

• Involve staff and test with audiences

Cons

• Requires quick response time from stakeholders

• Can be difficult to see big picture

• Decide when iteration stops and delivery needs to happen

• Manage tension between agile approach and museum culture

Characteristics of Agile

A Waterfall in a Rocky Landscape

NG627

Waterfall

• A sequential project approach – each phase is reliant on the successful completion of the previous one

• Additional documentation as in Prince2 also required e.g project scope, budget etc

What is Waterfall?

Sequential process

Pros

• Sequential design and build process

• Easy to understand dependencies and impacts on delivery

• Easier to spot when project goes off track

Cons

• Can get far down the track before knowing project has gone wrong

• Often nothing for stakeholders to see for long periods

• More difficult to build in change in project requirements, and can be costly

Waterfall methodology

• Could be dependent on approach to software development

• Has to fit in with the needs of the organisation

• What you feel comfortable with, and what is most likely to lead you to a successful delivery?

• Will help you to manage risk on your project

• Do you have the right skill sets on your team to support your chosen approach?

• Reality is that it will probably be a hybrid approach of one or more.

How do you decide which to use?

Line Communication Equipment, Feldfernsprecher 16 Type B, German

IWM COM 382

Project Management tools

• Communication is essential to facilitating a successful project

• What methods do you use in your organisation to ensure good communication?

• Tools like Basecamp

• Shared folders

• Shared docs

• Group email addresses

• Set up regular meetings virtual and face to face if poss

• Short progress reports, write for your audience

• * Short, frequent clear contact but don’t overload

Ways to manage communication

• Clear about approach to project

• Decided who is on my project board and project team

• Write and agree Project Initiation Document (PID) and/or brief

• Agree a project management methodology appropriate for the project

• Ensure additional documentation is written e.g. Risk register, schedule, budget breakdown

• Set up my channels of communication

• You’re ready to go!

Am I ready to start?

• Get into 2 teams

• Project task

• Assign roles – scribe, speaker to feedback

• Work out best solution and feedback to wider group

Troubleshooting

• Jan has a massive project to deliver involving a wide number of stakeholders

• The project is technically complex, involves a large amount of content and the scope of the project keeps changing depending on who you talk to

• The project is running behind schedule, costing more because the scope keeps changing and is losing the confidence of the Senior Management Team

• What can Jan do to get her project back on track?

Problem 1 – Runaway train

• David is working on an important digital project in his organisation. The project is proving to be very challenging because of different stakeholder expectations, resources and understanding.

• He needs Senior Management to step in and support him in the project otherwise there is a good chance it will fail. But Senior Management do not really understand what the issues are, or what David needs from them.

• What does David need to do to get Senior Management on board and ensure stakeholders are invested in the lifetime of the project

Problem 2 – Communication & Advocacy

• Sam has been working on a new mobile project. It has gone really well to date and everyone is very happy with progress.

• It’s time to do some user testing before final stages of delivery.

• Unfortunately, user testing feedback was not good. They didn’t understand the concept and couldn’t work out how to use it.

• Sam needs to decide what the next course of action is and how to communicate it, and then deliver.

Problem 3 – The wrong assumption

Your Challenge

You haven’t started a project until you have:

• Defined what the project is about

• Worked out your project management methodology

• Decision- making framework

• Roles and responsibilities

• Communication methods

• Risk management and issue log

• Budget

• Timeframe

• Success criteria

Takeaways

Carolyn Roystoncroyston@iwm.org.uk

@caro_ft

http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/carolyn-royston

Charlotte Sextoncharlotte.sexton@ng-london.org.uk

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/charlottesexton

If you want to contact us