Crowdsourced Library Project Management Toolkit
started 2/8/2013 by Jennifer Vinopal
*NOTE: As of 2017, this toolkit has moved to the DLF wiki and the document below is view only. Please visit and contribute to the new site: https://wiki.diglib.org/DLF_Project_Managers_Toolkit
Please come join us over there and keep this resource active!
What? A crowdsourced collection of information, tips, techniques, and tools for project managers working in libraries. PLEASE CONTRIBUTE. Let’s check this out
Why? Whether we realize it or not, librarians and library staff are managing projects all the time. These may be informal or formal projects, or we might not think of them as projects at all. Just the same, we could all stand to take a more organized and structured approach to planning and accomplishing our project work.
Much of the project management literature and training frequently emphasizes a corporate perspective, which is not applicable to a library setting.
Who? Anyone who wants to contribute. And you can post anonymously if you prefer.
How? Be generous with your knowledge and be respectful of what others have written. Share your experience and help others to learn from both your successes and failures.
For more details on the Digital Library Federation Project Managers Group, including past meeting notes, see: http://www.diglib.org/groups/pmg/
Table of Contents:
(Auto-generated, includes anything marked as a Heading)
6. Jira Greenhopper (Agile PM)
Non-Software Specific Technology Methods for Project Management
The Project Charter: Defining your project
PM Workshop slides and class syllabi
(Goal: use the easiest tool to get the job done)
NOTE TO CONTRIBUTORS -- WE COULD USE REVIEWS OF TOOLS HERE. WHICH ARE GOOD? WHICH STINK?
Josh/Northwestern: one thing I’d be interested in discussing or collocating resources on is getting project collaborators to actually use and embrace these project k tools. I think Asana and Basecamp are both brilliant tools, but confronting the growing problem in the digital age of having too many kitchens (as opposed to cooks) is a real obstacle to adoption. (Cliff at Princeton mentions this concern below too.)
Vinopal Comment: This is difficult. I think it's one of the project manager's biggest challenges. Everyone communicates differently and what works for one definitely doesn't work for another. Some like a ticketing system, some prefer f2f meetings, some prefer casual 1-on-1 conversation. I bend to collaborators' preferences rather than trying to corral everyone into one method. That's OK if you have a small enough team and have the time. Doesn't work for every project.
Free (up to 30 members 15 members as of 2016-04-27) online tool for groups managing tasks.
Review from Josh Honn, Digital Scholarship Fellow at Northwestern University: I’ve been using this for a few weeks and really appreciate the task-focused nature of this app. Seems great for task-based collaboration, but maybe not so helpful for project discussion (Basecamp being much better at the latter). Wonderful design and a really smart team behind this too.
Review from Tim Clarke, Muhlenberg College
We also used Asana for a small team. Asana has nearly everything we are looking for. It offers ‘soft’ task assignment and management. It integrates very nicely into mobile working and also allows notifications via email. You can archive completed projects. While it was suitable for software development projects, we also found you could use Asana for other kinds of projects, also (for example, we used Asana to help manage our move to WorldShare ILL). We have two criticisms. First, the free version does not permit the organization of project teams. In other words, if you have an account, you can see all the tasks and comments. Second, there is no bug/issue tracking capability.
free for one project, but pay for more than one project
Review from Lisa McAulay, UCLA Digital Library Program
Comment from Katherine Kott, Independent Consultant
Comment from Cliff Wulfman, Princeton: I’ve been using a Basecamp feature-rival, goPlan, (http://goplanapp.com/, three pricing plans) for several years now to manage some complicated multi-collaborator projects. Has worked well when I have been able to get collaborators to commit. But that’s very much the hardest part.
Josh/Northwestern: I only tested this tool briefly, but it appears to be a nice option for doing Scrum and agile project management online. That is, it looks and works like the Scrum boards we’re used to on paper.
From Jason Casden, NCSU Libraries: We are using this pretty heavily at NCSU Libraries and it has been getting rave reviews from a range of project members. We've used Basecamp quite a bit and it's an excellent project communication tool, but it sometimes fell a little short when it came to the ticket-y use cases--specifically, planning and discussion around smaller chunks of work could be difficult. Trello provides a clean interface that solves the many of our more pressing issues for smaller projects, including:
1) Feature-specific discussion and prioritization.
2) Simple bug tracking.
3) Recording actionable output of meetings to improve continuity between planning sessions as well as to easily document a common understanding of project goals.
4) Killing code block by structuring the project as a pipeline of clearly-defined tasks.
5) Providing a place where any project member's random ideas can be recorded before they're forgotten.
6) Encouraging open debate outside of meetings.
7) Providing a nice one-handed mobile interface for our colleagues with newborns.
We've found that the system is intuitive both for very-technical and less-technical colleagues and has helped to reduce the cognitive load associated with keeping project history in memory. We have also been using Google Docs for document management and GitHub for code management, but haven't yet tried integrating Trello with GitHub. I love the limits the Trello developers have embraced, but it will sometimes come up short when compared to some more complex project management systems (e.g. time tracking, elevated project manager privileges, scheduling and chart generation, document management). The current version is "free forever," although I think there are plans to offer a paid package with additional features.
From Sandra McIntyre, Mountain West Digital Library: We have used Trello for several projects, and it has worked exceptionally well for us. I would recommend it for any project where multiple team members are involved in the project, the tasks are fairly discrete and mostly at the same level (i.e., a nested hierarchy is not really possible in Trello beyond adding a “checklist” of sub-tasks to a single task), and the basic need is to show tasks getting checked off, not tracking time spent or resources used. We open it up for project check-in sessions and create/modify tasks and assign them on the spot with due dates. We all find it satisfying to “swipe” completed tasks into the “Done” column. We like the mobile interface as well. There is an export feature, and I would like to find someone who has created a tool to show Trello tasks in a Gantt format. Ganttify does this but it is not satisfactory; a sorting function would make it worthwhile to use.
From Alan Pike (@agilchristpike), Emory Center for Digital Scholarship. We piloted Trello as a project management platform for a peer-reviewed online journal published by the center (Southern Spaces) a few years back. We use it to manage and monitor the entire publication process of the journal, to manage editorial staff tasks and communications, and to use as a platform for managing our weekly staff meetings (tagging cards “For Discussion” to denote our agenda). We found the tool to be incredibly powerful for collaborative, asynchronous work and excellent for keeping tasks/publications/etc. from falling by the wayside. We have built, and are in the process of implementing, a similar Trello board for all of the project work going on in the center, but have a way to go. Some of the drawbacks associated with the program are the inability to produce a “To-Do” list, although I can imagine some workarounds within the program—at Southern Spaces we used Basecamp as a place for To-Dos, and Trello more as a tracking tool. It worked really well for managing a publication schedule, and for getting project-based communication/updates out of email and Google Docs and into one centralized platform. We use Trello “Cards” to capture all of the information that Jennifer outlines in steps 1–5 of her discussion of DLTS process below. Trello integrates well with cloud services, so you can link to a “project documents” folder in Drive, Dropbox, Box, etc. right on the card. We would then attach the Google Doc or more static (word or pdf) file to the card so it would all be in one place. Then, as the project progresses and we add meeting notes, completed tasks, etc. to the card so that all of that information is in one place together, and everyone can see it. You can assign team members to the card on an as-needed basis and they get notifications when actions are taken on a card they are assigned to. A project manager or supervisor who is not assigned to the card can also “subscribe” to it to get notifications as well. Trello automatically includes timestamps on all card comments and updates so that a running reverse-chronological (most recent first) list is easily viewable on the card. We typically ask team members to accomplish tasks by mentioning them in the comments on a card with the @ symbol, which also triggers a notification. Team members can view all cards that are assigned to them and all of their notifications on a single page, making daily log-ins useful for project and task tracking.
From Sarah Stanley, Florida State University Libraries - We use Trello for several of our projects, but I just wanted to bring up one specific use case that was particularly useful. Our Data Management Team uses Trello to track DMP consultations and follow-ups. Essentially, we created a template card that contained all of the information we would need for creating new Data Management Plans (name of PI, grant applied for, due date, etc). We also had some standard checklists in the template card. This card could easily be copied so that we were consistently getting the same data and performing the same tasks for every consultation. It also gave us an easy method for tracking who we needed to follow up with. I’ve found Trello really useful for making sure tasks are done consistently, even when there are moving parts.
Josh/Northwestern: We use Google docs as much as possible (project reports, spreadsheets, presentations, project charters and MOUS, etc.). Always interested in finding ways to integrate with other applications like Asana, Basecamp, and JIRA.
Jennifer/NYU: I also use Google docs as much as possible. Easy to share and control who can see/do what in folders and docs. Easy to organize and search. I’ve described my typical PM process using Google docs in the “Non Software-Specific...” section below.
Sandra/MWDL: We use Google Docs for pretty much every collaborative meeting, particularly with our Digitization Committee and its Task Forces.
Online, collaborative, agile project management software.
Free trial. Various pricing plans.
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/
From Joan Starr--We use this here at California Digital Library, although not across the board. Developers actually like it and will keep it up to date. If you, too, dive in and use it for your weekly status meetings, it can become a fruitful tool. Like everything else, GIGO.
From Katherine Kott--We are using this for the ArchivesSpace project too (on recommendation from Brian Tingle at CDL). It seems to be working quite well for our purposes. It supports an agile scrum development process with a geographically dispersed virtual team quite well.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/overview
Carolyn Caizzi, Digital Collections, Northwestern University Library--We use this to track our work on our repository applications development and other projects (such as a migration project off one old server hosting many legacy applications and digital collections). Many staff who use it were trained in scrum--we have 2 week sprints where the scrum team decides which stories to work on and tasks them out, then we have daily stand ups where the scrum team discusses work that was done yesterday and work that will be done today. It really has helped with understanding the amount of work the developers put into a feature request and also the amount of work it takes to coordinate meetings, etc. We don’t use it for our reformatting digital projects, more for the repository app development projects.
Tim Clarke, Head Library Systems, Muhlenberg College
Redmine is open source, web-based, Ruby on Rails, and can use MySQL or PostgreSQL as its database. Installation is easy to moderate. There are some dependencies (ImageMagick) but most are standard for Debian-like Linux installations. Hosting options are available from several vendors; the easiest option might be DigitalOcean, as they offer a Redmine ‘droplet’. Linode isn’t a bad VM option, either. There are some Redmine support documents for Ubuntu installations in the Linode forums.
On the positive, Redmine has shown rock-solid reliability. There are many extensions/plugins and there is an active developer community (https://github.com/redmine/redmine). Gantt chart generation, linkage to version control, good issue tracking - including the ability to submit via email once configured. There is also LDAP authentication capacity. You can manage multiple simultaneous projects, also a plus.
On the downside, in our experience, it is difficult to extend Redmine to manage projects that aren’t typical software development ones. We had limited success envisioning how Redmine could accommodate something like large data cleanup projects. Also, time tracking is a core aspect of Redmine. We have concerns that there might be resistance to (rightly or wrongly) any tool that strongly emphasizes how much time is required to complete chunks of work. this sort of project management (amongst managers) while de-emphasizing its importance (amongst staff).
Cynthia York, Sheridan Libraries/DRCC, Johns Hopkins University
Smartsheet is a good tool for tracking project tasks with the simplicity of a spreadsheet. It is very flexible, easy to customize and includes the option of a Gantt chart view. You can try it for 30 days free of charge, then academic pricing is available at various levels, depending on the size of your team.
The collaboration feature has been very helpful with several projects that I manage. Team members can update tasks in real-time; you can add comments, attachments and Smartsheet links directly to Google docs. There are many training videos and articles on the website to help you get started and ongoing training webinars. Customer service is very responsive.
From Sarah Stanley, FSU - I wanted to add Slack here, since it integrates with many of the above-mentioned project management tools (e.g. Trello and Google Apps), and it offers a great tool for integrating project/task tracking with project discussion. It allows collaborators to have ad hoc discussions in “channels.” These channels can be separated out by topics, and can either be open to an entire team or closed (i.e. only certain members can join). Because of the nature of Slack’s interface, discussions can happen more quickly than they would in email, and it’s a lot less time-consuming than reading and responding to emails. Channels provide a space that could actually replace meetings if they are used in a specific way. There are several scholarly communities that use slack (e.g. the Digital Humanities slack, which effectively functions as an informal listserv).
Also, Slack’s integrations are great, since you can see what progress is being made on projects, get notifications about due dates and calendar events, set up reminders for specific tasks, and import documents.
Downsides: only 10,000 message storage in the free version (messages start getting removed after 10,000).
From Lisa McAulay, UCLA Digital Library Program
We have a process in place (which we still feel is pretty nascent, but helping us along) for three units in the section of the library called Digital Initiatives and Information Technology (DIIT). For our process we’re using Atlassian software products (Confluence (wiki) and Jira (ticket-tracking)). I think this process is software-independent--that is, you could use any shared document creating technology and any communication method.
We use a wiki to create foundational project management documents. Including project charters, project plan documents, meeting documents, requirements documents. We then create a project in Jira (our ticket tracker) and assign tasks to project resources. We found that if we keep our tickets limited to 2-week projections then they are accurate. If we put all the steps from a detailed plan in as tickets, it’s too far out to be helpful and just piles up someone’s tickets. Email notices are sent to the reporter, the assignee, and watchers each time a ticket is created and its status is changed. This means we have email prompts, but the information about a ticket is all stored in a central system that anyone can review. This improves documentation and helps to keep everyone on the same page without resorting to email as the primary way to assign work and to report on work done.
From Jennifer Vinopal, NYU’s Digital Library Technology Services (DLTS)
My method these days for setting up DLTS projects:
From Katherine Kott--whatever the rest of your process includes, make sure you start with a charter. [++++1111 from @jvinopal]
From Andy Ashton, Brown University Library Digital Technologies:
Currently we’re experimenting with having sprint teams choose their own software tools (if any) that they feel support their work on the project. As a result some projects have ended up using JIRA/Greenhopper (for more ongoing software dev work) and others have opted to use things like Trello (for more fuzzy, DH project work). While it does run the risk of scattering too much info across too many systems, it forces us to recognize that the purpose of these tools is primarily to help with organization, and that other processes that occur outside of software tools (e.g., daily stand-ups, sprint planning & review) are probably more important.
Question for Ashton: does the team choose one tool per project? Or do different members of the team use different tools within the same project? And do you make any attempt to archive any of the documentation at the end of the project, or do you consider the info in these various tools to be ephemeral?
Answer: “They have the latitude to choose the tools they want to use for task tracking. However, since certain staff tend to work in similar groupings and on similar types of projects over time, I suspect they're developing their own practices and everybody, thus far, seems pretty flexible about what tool they use. We tend to have a lot of small projects in the hopper at one time, so being flexible allows us not to spend too much time and energy trying to reconcile projects in a single system. We initially tried to archive tasks from our physical project board, but that proved too cumbersome. Instead, now each sprint team does a one-page sprint plan and one-page sprint assessment at the beginning and end of each sprint, respectively. We use these summaries as the record of the work and accept that the individual tasks may be ephemeral. This is all still a work in progress.”
Planning poker
For estimating time/effort in agile projects.
For planning poker cards with nice mountain goats on them:
http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/topics/planning-poker
http://store.mountaingoatsoftware.com/
More on planning poker: http://agile.dzom/articles/introduction-planning-poker
After Action Review (aka a “Retrospective” in Agile-ese)
(you don’t have to wait until it’s over, AAR can also be used midstream in a project)
Learn from your successes and mistakes -- a great way for a team to review what happened, what worked, and what didn’t work during a project and how to do it better next time.
Meeting Planning
I’ve found Doodle very useful for planning meetings. It is free and requires only that the person setting up the meeting survey have an account. Responders/voters do not have to have an account to participate, only the link to the meeting poll. It is much easier than the reply to all tactic and much better than the Outlook feature.
- What are your favorite questions to ask the various stakeholders about a project as you're starting to create the project charter and plan?
- What questions help you really understand what the project is, what the expectations are of the various participants, and how to plan it properly?
- What about questions for the project team and yourself about how the team will work effectively together?
=== From Tom Cramer, Stanford University
In the library context, I find there is particular ambiguity in three areas around projects:
I've found these questions helpful in addressing these areas:
=== From Kathleen Cameron
I always ask about people's availability - how much time can they reasonably contribute (what else is on their plates), are they taking vacation, or scheduled for jury duty and when.
=== From Jennifer Vinopal, NYU
Goal of the project charter: document agreement of all parties (sponsor, stakeholder, staff) about the goals, scope, and deliverables of the project. Defines time, scope and cost.
Basic Project Charter Format:
1. Project name
2. Description (high-level statement of you
3. Success criteria (how will we know when the project is done?) – SMART goals
4. Requirements (deliverables, optionals, & out of scope)
5. Project team (including roles)
6. Milestones/Schedule (high-level + proposed dates)
Drafting the charter is an iterative process:
• Write a draft
• Share it with project team
• Share it with stakeholders
• Rewrite
• Repeat until consensus
=== From Christine Malinowski, MIT (@ChrisMalinow)
The Project Charter Toolkit (http://project-charter-template.casual.pm/) can be a useful resource whether you are looking to understand what a project charter is or you’re just looking for some fresh ideas on laying out/structuring your particular charter. They have free templates to download, samples, etc.
“The Project One-Pager: A simple tool for collaboratively defining project scope.”
Tito Sierra, DLF Forum, 2011
A straightforward way to describe your project and project scope in order to build consensus.
http://www.slideshare.net/tsierra/the-projectonepager
“Managing Projects: Or I’m In Charge, Now What? (aka PM4Lib).” Metz, Rosalyn & Becky Yoose, Code4Lib Preconference, 2014. http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/2014_preconference_proposals#Managing_Projects:_Or_I.27m_in_charge.2C_now_what.3F_.28aka_PM4Lib.29.
Lim, Lawrence, and Aileen Koh. “IT Portfolio Management in Higher Education.” Adelaide, 2009. http://epublications.bond.edu.au/library_pubs/22
Vinopal, Jennifer. “Project Portfolio Management for Academic Libraries: A Gentle Introduction.” College & Research Libraries 73, no. 4 (July 2012): 379–389.
http://crl.acrl.org/content/73/4/379.full.pdf+html?sid=cde93e18-861b-4311-8cde-7ce4fc04131e
THATCamp Philly
Workshop 2 | Herding Cats: Project Management for Collaborative Work
2:00PM-3:45PM, Friday September 23, 2011
Instructor: Delphine Khanna, Temple University
Description: How can you make sure that the project gets done when you’re not the “boss” and you don’t even work for the same institution? This workshop will give participants project management skills to help make sure that all stakeholders are heard, happy, involved and invested.
Session slides: http://philly2011.thatcamp.org/files/2012/06/khanna_pm.pptx
Project Management in a Box
http://www.slideshare.net/joanstarr/project-management-in-a-box
A presentation Joan Starr did for in service training at UC Berkeley Library in 2011
Project management
http://www.slideshare.net/cavlec/project-management-16606291
Slides from Dorothea Salo’s LIS classes
Introduction to Project Management for Libraries
Slides from Jennifer Vinopal’s presentation for the Project Management workshop at Electronic Resources & Libraries, 2013
http://hdl.handle.net/2451/31750
From Karen Calhoun:
Calhoun, Karen S., and Jessica G. Benner. 2014. “Project Management in Libraries: LIS2971 Summer Course.” http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/22620/. Abstract: Includes syllabus and 4 class presentations for a short 1-credit course to introduce LIS students or practitioners to the discipline of project management in a hands-on way, so that they can begin applying project management methods immediately.
Cecily Walker’s “How I Work: Getting Started with Managing Small Projects” http://cecily.info/2015/11/12/getting-started-managing-small-projects/ [Link is dead - here’s an archived version: https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20151116193421/http://cecily.info/2015/11/12/getting-started-managing-small-projects ]
Wamsley. “Controlling project chaos: project management for library staff.” PNLA Quarterly 73:2 (2009). http://www.pnla.org/assets/documents/Quarterly/pnla_winter09.pdf (pp. 5-‐6, 27)
Leon. “Project management for humanists.” #alt-‐academy http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/alt-ac/pieces/project-management-humanists
Csaba. “SCRUM: The story of an agile team.” http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/editorials/scrum-the-story-of-an-agile-team/
Jeremy Boggs, 4 posts on Designing for Digital Humanities Projects:
1. http://clioweb.org/2008/04/18/part-one-figure-out-what-youre-building/
2. http://clioweb.org/2008/04/27/part-two-information-architecture-and-organization/
3. http://clioweb.org/2008/06/04/part-three-design-process/
4. http://clioweb.org/2008/10/11/part-four-front-end-development/
Project management in libraries, archives and museums: working with government and other external partners / Julie Carpenter
2011, English Book xviii, 207 p. : charts ; 24 cm. Oxford : Chandos, ; ISBN: 1843345668 9781843345664
Worldcat link (includes TOC): http://www.worldcat.org/title/project-management-in-libraries-archives-and-museums-working-with-government-and-other-external-partners/oclc/503046657&referer=brief_results
Spammy (but maybe useful?) link to PM Training vendor, moved from first page to more appropriate links section
MTI is a global, project-focused training company, helping people around the world improve
the way they manage their projects, contracts, requirements and vendors. MTI provides excellent training to customers to bring knowledge and the skills to reach their business goals. MTI helps and assist customer in anyway possible to become more competitive and keep them abreast of the latest trend in management to be ahead of the competition and create sustainable value for their customers and shareholders.
It has various courses which you can join and take advantages of that. MTI is offering you excellent instructor-led and virtual PMP, CAPM, CCBA, CBAP, and PMI–ACP exam review boot.
Horwath, Jenn Anne. “How do we manage? Project Management in Libraries: An Investigation” Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research 7, no. 1 (2012). <https://journal.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/perj/article/view/1802>
-- “This paper seeks to take a first step toward understanding how libraries are managing their projects and to uncover the activities, tools and techniques, best practices, challenges, success criteria and success factors of projects undertaken in libraries, especially those in Ontario. To accomplish this, a literature review, an online survey of Ontario library staff and interviews with library administrators were conducted.”