Project Management Workshop slides. Charlotte Sexton and Carolyn Royston at Museums and the Web 2012. The workshop provided a toolkit for delivery of digital projects in cultural organisations encompassing both strategic and tactical approaches. The approaches were applicable to large or small-scale website development, multimedia and mobile projects. We used illustrations of real world examples throughout and covered both the successes and lessons learned. Read more: Digital project management 101: Getting your project off the starting blocks | bit.ly/IEahsk

1. Digital project management 101:
Getting your project off the starting blocks
Carolyn Royston, IWM & Charlotte Sexton, NG
Museums and the Web 2012

2. To get us started
• 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

3. What this workshop is all about:
• 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...

4. Before we get going
Here’s a bit about us and our organisations....

5. Imperial War Museums

11. IWM Collection
• 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

15. National Gallery

18. National Gallery Collection
• 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’

23. Ground rules
• 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

24. What makes a good Project Manager ?
• Methodology
• Communicator
• Organised
• Consistent
• Can see the whole picture
• Manage pressure and deliver to deadlines

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

26. Before you start your project
• 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

27. How do I fill in the gaps?
Wartime social survey: Information gathering in wartime Britian, UK, 1944

28. Project Management methodologies
Methodology and approaches:
• Prince2
• Agile
• Waterfall

29. Prince2
Prince Albert
G6537

30. What is 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

31. 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

32. Agile
A Recruit joins the Army
© IWM (H 17182)

33. What is 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

34. Agile
Scope and
Requirements
Feedback and Plan and
iterate Design
Build in
Launch Sprints

35. Characteristics of Agile
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

36. Waterfall
A Waterfall in a Rocky Landscape
NG627

37. What is 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

38. Sequential process
Scope & Requirements
Design
Build & Implementation
Launch
Maintenance

39. Waterfall methodology
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

40. How do you decide which to use?
• 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.

41. Project Management tools
Line Communication Equipment, Feldfernsprecher 16 Type B, German
IWM COM 382

42. Ways to manage communication
• 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

43. Am I ready to start?
• 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!

44. Troubleshooting
• Get into 2 teams
• Project task
• Assign roles – scribe, speaker to feedback
• Work out best solution and feedback to wider group

45. Problem 1 – Runaway train
• 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?

46. Problem 2 – Communication & Advocacy
• 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

47. Problem 3 – The wrong assumption
• 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.

48. Your Challenge
2. Communication 3. Wrong
1. Runaway train
& Advocacy Assumption
• Massive project • No shared • Appeared to be
• Scope issues understanding well-managed
• Get project back • PM needs support • User feedback
on track • Buy-in needed unexpected &
negative
• Need to regroup &
agree course of
action

49. Takeaways
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

50. If you want to contact us
Carolyn Royston
croyston@iwm.org.uk
@caro_ft
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/carolyn-royston
Charlotte Sexton
charlotte.sexton@ng-london.org.uk
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/charlottesexton