Another week coming to an end. Time indeed flies. Several of us traveled to Amherst College to talk to them about Drupal, the web content management system. I thought it was a great meeting. One of the key pieces that we will need for Drupal is Amherst’s Monster Menus.  Whereas I was very happy to see the UConn men win last week, UConn women’s loss was not a happy moment. These kinds of unpredictable moments always remind me of how vulnerable all of us are. No matter how good you are and no matter how well you plan, things don’t always go the way that you plan. No worries, there is always the next year or the next project. I also talked to the Friends of the Library on Tuesday about where LTS is headed in the years to come. It was really fun.

Talking about projects, project management and key performance indicators (KPI) seem to be everywhere. Demand for services is far more than the available resources. There are a few institutions that have adopted the project management methodologies and have been reasonably successful, but many are simply unable to. As I mentioned in an earlier post, KPIs are extremely important in conveying how an organization is performing at any given point in time, in comparison to the same time in previous years and how goals are met.

My own feelings about this can be cast as practical project management…

First off, definitions of terms like Project Management, Mobile Apps, Reporting (data) provide enough latitude for us to interpret them liberally. Many of us zone in on resource management aspect of the project management, rightfully so. “We have so many requests waiting in the queue, how do we estimate the time it is likely to take, how do we allocate resources” – all great questions, but no clear answers, especially in our environment.

Estimation of time for a project is extremely complex business because we can certainly estimate the time it will take on the programmer’s part, but there is a lot more to it than that. We need commitment from many others from other offices whose time allocation is something we don’t control. Typically there is a project management office who is charged with managing all of this including the commitments from all different offices. If commitments are not met, they are appropriately escalated, timelines updated to reflect the delay etc. etc. This level of order in an inherently chaotic environment is hard to achieve.

Secondly, in environments like ours, the return on investment for this level of project management is likely to be poor and disappointing because it is not enough for just one unit to be disciplined about project management – all participating units have to adopt. Also, for this to work as intended, project specifications cannot change much (good luck!) and estimates that are provided should be trusted (hmmmm… more good luck!) and finally, we need clear identification of decision makers (no comments).

This is why we need a more practical and inclusive approach. We work with all those who need projects done to collectively help us prioritize them. When we are ready to take on a project, make sure that the resources from the other side are readily available during that time. Analysis is critical and important, but don’t cross that line between analysis and analysis paralysis. Make the project incremental where you can – show progress towards completion rather than always waiting for completion (we should ask ourselves as to how many ‘projects’ we have done that have resulted in completion. There are always those few extensions…). Finally, be innovative and creative, where possible, about creating frameworks that allow for easy extensions.

Measuring progress is extremely important. However, it is far more important that we first define a few important questions  – What do we want to measure, why and for who? It is also important to have an action plan when the metric fails to meet goals that we set to achieve. Too often, we work backwards based on all that we can measure. In that case, it simply becomes a measurement.

In many institutions, strategic plan drives this conversation. Goals and metrics are developed based on the plan.  IT KPIs such as network uptime or # of helpdesk tickets resolved on time or the total # of projects completed successfully do not rise up to that level. But, organizationally, these metrics are very important – like the statistics we measured during registration (eg. how many students were able to successfully complete the registration in the first minute, how it compared to the previous term etc.)

Finally, there are certain things that are subjective and not measurable that are indicators of progress – the community feedback during conversations, the “mood” of the community towards an organization. We need to be constantly checking this pulse and act on them as needed.

I believe that we are making great progress on all fronts – we had a successful registration, VPN, High Performance Computing, Google Apps migration, Mobile Apps, Sakai, Digital Commons institutional repository, Image management software (most likely Shared and Open Shelf), Drupal, WISP (Written Information Security Policy) training, the list goes on and on. Our way of doing patron driven acquisition was picked up by the Association of American Publishers who have invited our collections librarians to talk to their Book Committee in New York. In addition, our Special Collections has received 25 maps of Switzerland from 15-18th century as well as 250 Bruce Rogers Riverside Press books.

Not to mention several others that are in the works – Entering student portal, portal redo, VDI, LabSTOR, network redesign, Summon, Drupal implementation and a ton more.

Not sure what is the right scale to measure all of this, but I call this GREAT progress! LTS staff, Keep up the great work!