I was out playing golf at the Nehoiden golf club yesterday evening with my son and a fellow golfer yet again reminded us of how humbling a game golf is. In theory, many of us who have played the game for several years, know what to do – stretch, the grip, the setup, placement of the ball, keep your head down, keep your head down, keep your head down…, practice swing, club face, back swing, read the green, so on and so forth. However, execution is a whole different thing and concentration is a big factor. For the undisciplined person like me, that last email that I just read messes up my execution. And then, I read research papers like “Rotational biomechanics of the elite golf swing: benchmarks for amateurs” (bad idea) and start worrying about how I am doing relative to best practices mentioned there. I need to meditate and do yoga to learn mind control & have a flexible body to be a good golfer!

We, in LTS, are engaged in a lot of “projects” and they pose the same challenges as a golf swing. There are umpteen variables that all need to line up for a successful execution. Just the way that the ball does not land most of the time exactly where you want to, projects also don’t end up where one originally intended. Sometimes, the ball lands in a sand trap and getting it out is not clean and you need to rake the sand to make the trap appear undisturbed – in several projects such mishits and cleanups are necessary.

I will loosely define a “project” for this purpose as anything we do that is collaborative, either within LTS or as in many cases, in collaboration with others in the College, that is not routine maintenance or upgrade activity and takes a significant amount of time and effort. “Project Management” is like the golf swing (it is typically planning, managing resources, organizing etc. ) and just like we have a goal in golf of achieving a great score, each project should have a clear set of goals. Many of the projects have long shelf life and require continued attention. In very few cases we can call a project closed. For example, developing a checklist for students is a project. But it continues to be developed because the sponsors of the project feel that it has brought tremendous efficiencies and we can actually milk it for even more.  This is different from golf in that you can’t take that perfect swing you had yesterday and try to do better – almost always you screw up!

Any project has multiple dimensions and bringing structure to it helps in accomplishing it in a timely manner. Unfortunately, this also dampens the initial enthusiasm. For eg, at Wellesley, we require the project sponsors to go through a process described here. You get this bright idea in the shower and you are all pumped up to pitch it and get it done and then you realize you need to go through a “process” – how much fun can that be? In all seriousness, “process” is important and it is the key.

You are excited because you saw how easy a game golf is on TV and decided to book a tee time, buy all the golf gear, and go to play and you can’t even hit the ball! There is a lot in between the initial excitement and what you need to do, like taking lessons, practicing a lot etc. And even after all of that, it takes a long time to get to somewhere that you can be proud of.

It is the same here. Even after the process has been followed, so many things have to still come together. Almost always, it comes as a rude shock to the office that is sponsoring a technology project, how much of their own staff’s time is needed for the project. In fact, in many cases, technology is the simplest part. Is the system yielding expected results for as many possible scenarios as possible? This, called, the functional testing, consumes enormous amount of time. And guess what, this is NOT something we can possibly do. We in LTS cannot be the experts in student registrations, financial aid, HR matters etc. all at the same time. We understand where the data lives, how they are coded, how to retrieve them and deliver according to specifications, but we just cannot possibly do the functional testing. We are one component of the project. To get a perfect shot, lot of things have to come together – commitment from the end user, managing expectations, effective communication, escalation when things are not going well etc.

Frankly, we are doing much better with projects in comparison to some of the others based on conversations with other CIOs.  This is because, we are fortunate to have colleagues who understand and appreciate the complexities of doing projects and most importantly, willing to agree to certain compromises that are necessary – one of the biggest is the “Forever Beta” idea. When we initiate a project, we tell our collaborators “you can either wait for a long time until you have the dream product or we will be happy to give you the essentials first and keep adding to it incrementally”. They tend to go for the latter option.

Finally, one thing that is not seriously taken into account is the actual cost of the project. Since effective communication is key to the success of a project, we need to meet often to discuss the progress of the project. Every such meeting has a cost associated with it. Every hour a programmer spends on developing the product, or every hour a staff member is researching an option for a new Library system, has an associated cost. We need to capture these for various reasons. One is to assess whether the end product is worth the cost and secondly to assess whether it is cheaper to purchase a product instead. It is our goal to bring this type of analysis into our project management starting from this year.

I will be thinking about the commonalities between golf and projects every time I play, which only will worsen my score. May be not! Whether it is a golf game or a project, there is always the 19th hole – where you sit & relax, have a beer and reflect on what you just did and plan the next game or project. At that instance when you sip the cold beer, you know in your gut that the next game (or project) will be way better!