Planning and management of digital projects

Overview

Assessing the feasibility to Assessing the feasibility to become digital

Building selection criteriaBuilding selection criteria

Project planningProject planning

Why technology projects failWhy technology projects fail

Vision, risk and resource managementVision, risk and resource management

Management toolkitManagement toolkit

Exercise!Exercise!

Assessing the feasibility to become digital (1)

The physical nature of originals for digitisation

Can the items be handled safely?

Variation across the collection?

Accurate information of the number of items?

Adequate catalogue or index?

Copyright and intellectual property rights issues?

Suitably skilled staff?

Enough time available to plan and manage the project?

Durham Libae Vitae Penny Illustrated Paper, October 1868

Design Council Archive, University of Brighton

Lambeth Palace, church plan of St. James Sheldwich

Assessing the feasibility to become digital (2)

Sufficient hardware/software and technical infrastructure?

Delivery system needs (GIS or audio-visual for instance)

Storage: might be 10kb-1Gb per image/item!

Plan to preserve the physical reliability of the data?

Plan to ensure the continued usability of the data?

Costs versus benefits

Building selection criteria

Stakeholder studies

Understand your audience

Address actual information needs and

goals

Avoid online brochures

Avoid repetition

Create a narrative

Add value

Building selection criteria

policy and information goals

identify collections of value to goals

plan most effective route to create resource

seek funding

Project planning

“Planning is an unnatural process. It is much nicer to just get on with the job: failure then comes as a complete surprise instead of being preceded by a period of worry and doubt.”

Sir John Harvey-Jones(with thanks for quote to Hazel Anderson - Testaments Project, Scottish Archive Network)

Why technology based projects fail

32% - inadequate project management & control

20% - lack of communication

17% - failure to define objectives

17% - lack of familiarity with project scope & complexity

14% - incorrect technology, project size & other.

Figures courtesy of KPMG

Project Planning: 3 Key Factors

Visioncan you see the whole picture?

Risk managementensuring the vision is achievable.

Resource managementputting vision into practice.

Planning: Vision

Describe the complete project

Understand how the elements fit together

Be holistic - think about the lifecycle!

Do not need to understand the detail of every technical element but must understand it’s project implication

Be able to define solid objectives, goals and deliverables.

Why you? - the “Hollywood pitch” !

Planning: Risk and Resource Management

Employ a good project manager

Empower the right people

Ensure good communications

Training - invest

Define your acceptance criteria and assign ranking

Ensure early scheduling of equipment delivery

Have a quality plan

Be honest about the problems and risk of failure

The Managers Toolkit

Clear vision = clear goals = clear success criteria

Stakeholder studies: defining the value of the asset base according to users/policy makers

Feasibility studies: to extend the evidence base

Infrastructure survey: can your goals be achieved with the technology available?

Matrix of requirements: supports technology implementation

Risk assessment: enables planning to mitigate future risk

What’s Your Big IdeaBig Idea?

Exercise: What is Your Big Idea?

Write a brief, 1 –3 line description of a digitization or digital project idea you have

Include potential funders, funding strategy

Discuss with group

10 minutes now for thinking/writing 20 minutes talking/sharing during the

fundraising session