Managing Projects: from ideas to reality

Presented at the ALA 2013 annual conference on Sunday at 1:00pm.

"Project management is controlling the introduction of a desired change." From the UK institute on project management. 

This presentation didn't give me anything that was particularly applicable so, what follows is a bunch of ideas I came up with as I sat in the session. 

Side Note to self- ask Nini about DLDS sponsoring an ASTD workshop for the SDCs in MD to learn more about the program and the certification and its renewal. Or sponsoring an improv workshop from the group in Baltimore. Or sponsoring a Thiagi workshop on training games. Are there implications for any of these outside of this SDCs (anyone who gives presentations, improv for communication, or managers, etc?) that would warrant the regional sponsoring them directly?

Side note to self: can Facebook be used as a project management tool? Prezi? Other freely available tools that are more social and transparent?

Side note to self: ask for volunteers from the three counties to hear my staff development ideas so I can see if they are viable among the staff. Kinda like focus groups but call them something else that's more visual and meaningful. (The TLC approach. Talk to people) Maybe request audience during preschrduled meetings (branch staff meetings, etc). 

Project Management Tools

Jira (is expensive and has a steep learning curve)

Wikis

Oppm - downloadable

Basecamp - is proprietary 

Flow charts

Partnerships in unlikely places

Presented at the ALA 2013 on Sunday at 10:30am. 

"The absurd can become fantastic!"

Stop saying:

10. That won't work

9. That's stupid

8. There's no money

7. We don't had enough staff

6. We can't do that

5. We've tried that before

4. The board won't let us

3. They can't do that

2. They've don't it before

1. It just won't work

Example: doing story times in Panera

Example: partnering with local tv station to do children's programming for tweens

Example: partnered with developers to build a library on the first floor of an apartment building. 

Zandra Campbell's food partnership in Baltimore was mentioned!!!

Example: host the local hospital's annual fundraiser

Example: get local window manufacturer to donate all new windows

Example: partner with park district/nps to put laminated kids books in local parks. 

Tips to identify opportunities

1. Get involved in your community; know the players because partnerships depend on relationships

2. Look for the service gaps; has there been a service that has been eliminated or threatened?

3. Listen and read; local news, conversations, newsletter, eavesdrop everywhere

4. Make partnerships a priority; include this in a strategic plan. 

5. Don't forget yourselves; include your staff and library. Ask ourselves what do we offer? Practice tooting your own horns. Moresville, NC partnered with NASCAR to pay for staff development for the library.

Why don't people use our library? They don't know why they should. 

What do we have or could we have to offer inside or outside our spaces?

1. Cross advertising (have a sample museum gallery inside and say, if you like what you see here you can go the full gallery at X place)

2. Community rooms. Dance classes, telecommuter space, kids birthday parties

3. Roof top dining or picnic area (if living rooftop)

4. Coffee houses samples...

5. Wifi

6. Entertainment

7. Temperature control

8. Education (classes)

9. Attentive listeners

When identifying potential partners be sure to ask:

1. Do your organizational values match?

2. Do we have common/complementary goals?

3. Is there a mutual commitment? (Equal time to dedicate to the project)

4. Are there complementary/complimenting strengths?

5. Are there other potential partnerships that we are overlooking?

Read FastCompany magazine. Or their website. 

How to succeed in a partnership

1. Trust your partner. If you don't, then start small and build trust. 

2. Clearly defined goals and expectations of all partners

3. Get buy in from the top from all partners

4. There's no such thing as over communication

5. Be patient. It won't happen overnight nor without glitches. Slow down. 

Process - how it works

Find a hole, come up with a goal, and then fill the hole. 

Brainstorming exercise - be as absurd and imaginative as possible

Identify a Potential gaps and opportunities 

Define end result

Identify partnerships

What do those partners bring to the table

Other questions to ask:

Is the program or project on target with libs mission and vision?

Is there enthusiasm within the lib?

Does the project support other lib department obj?

Is there potential for growth?

Will it result in a lasting impact?

Will we learn from this? Does it present professional development for staff?

Project Management

Presented at the ALA annual conference on Sunday at 8:30am. 

Potential applications for me:

1. The summit

2. The Wave eNewsletter

3. The workshops I teach or will teach (monthly technology workshops, appy hours, 1:1 eresources appointments)

4. Planning the yearly workshops I pay outside presenters for

5. Committee work (MLLI)

Chestalene Pintozzi:

Must have clear vision, goals, and priorities

Full and deep commitment from admin

Clearly defined process and core group of trained people

Project management institute (qualify people as project managers)

Agile/scrum project management (software developers)

The waterfall PM technique:

Define to project

-what is to be accomplished and why

-timeline desired or required

-parameters (scope of project)

-constraints (people, budget, etc)

-resources available (knowledge, skills, etc)

Ownership of project

-admin level owner (sponsor, steering committee, champion, etc)

-project manager (leads the process and project team, they liaise between project and organization)

-project team

Plan the project

-major components of the work, deliverables

-define the tasks required to complete the work (to a level that allows key stakeholders to understand clearly what is going to happen, has to happen, etc)

-estimate time required to complete the tasks

-identify dependencies (which tasks are dependent on others being completed)

-assign owners of tasks and deliverables

-establish, test, and revise baseline schedule 

Risk management plan and communication plans

-identify and assess potential threats

-develop risk management plan for major threats

-identify critical stakeholders and develop a plan o communicate with and to seek input and feedback

-obtain admin level support to proceed with project 

Project execution and reporting

-project manager monitors progress and works with team to resolve issues

-timeline may need to be adjusted or additional resources may be needed

-communication with stakeholders must be frequent and clear

Completion and handoffs

-if project results into going efforts then team needs to negotiate where and by whom the work will be done

-team needs to verify completion of project with admin owner

-assess success of project and develop a handoff process to assess ongoing work (organizational success criteria)

Close out and recognition

-formally handoff

-have a formal close out session

-celebrate and recognize team for their individual and group achievements and contributions

Potential Pitfalls

-vague project definition

-inadequate planning

-use of expert as project manager (group will just do as he/she suggests rather than thinking on their own and or the expert will end up doing the bulk of the work)

-failure to communicate

-inadequate or inappropriate resources

-lack of organizational commitment

Kevin Barclay @ Deschutes PL in Oregon

Implementation at a a public library

1. Identify the issue

-project form

-action form (a task that a dept can accomplish)

-relationship issue (if its a communication issue)

2. Who does what

-chair of project or team

-members of project or team (diversity of perspective is important)

-project management team

3. Project form

-improvement goal

-expected results

-success factors

-impacted resources or RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed)

-milestones

-actions

If you have a large project then it might be beneficial to chunk the project into mini projects

Who is in charge -- See RACI above. 

Make sure your goal is an end and not a means. 

Stephanie...

Constructed a high density shelving facility at university of Illinois 

Note to self- look at project management literature

Book: The superior project organization? Says ambassadorships are extremely important (kinda gets to accumulating buy in and support)

Lorene...

A special library perspective

Question: did any of you use any project management software or other technologies to help you keep track of things? - they sued Microsoft project and access. One guy chose not to use it because he felt like it would inhibit the transparency of the project. Tom's Planner - cheaper and easier to use than ms project. 

Experimentation and Innovation in Libraries: What we can learn fromlean start-ups

This program was presented at the American library association's annual conference in Chicago on Saturday the 29th. The are my raw notes to be edited and elaborated upon later. The slides can be found on SlideShare. 

I need to talk with these guys about problems/assumptions I have so I can be partnered with developers who want to create solutions and have the time to create solutions. 

Will Evans and Simon Marcus from The Library Corporation (TLC) were the actual speakers.

Exercise: turn to your neighbor and ask them why do we need libraries. Take a pic of them and then tweet their answer with #ALA13

Libraries have not changed that much in 2k years. 

Book: The Lean Starup

"The failed because they built something no one wanted"

Culture of refinement vs a culture of exploration - refinement actually misses the best solution. Exploration finds a bunch of best solutions and once you find those best solutions then you refine (multiple hypothesis testing). Minimize the total time through the loop: ideas-prototype-build. 

Marcia bates' berry picking model mirrors a lean start up rules. 

Lean startup meta rules:

1. Clearly articulate and test your assumptions

2. Get out of the building (talk to people you don't normally talk to)

3. Iterate based on what you learned from talking with other people

4. Don't invest in anything that isn't validated

(When in an argument...) How much time could we all save if we just let the other guy have his way and subsequently proves himself wrong?

Early assumptions: (which you then turn into testable hypotheses)

1. Who are our customers?

2. What pain points do they have?

3. How will we solve their pain points?

4. What is the most important thing they need?

5. What is our differentiation?

Our real competitors are our early adopters who are solving their own problems on their own. 

Book: Who owns the future?

Information is sing devalued. What is being valued is the monetization of information. And we are giving our stuff away for free. 

Lean startup machine - they have events and workshops. It's pretty cheap. One of the most valuable things the presenter ever went to. 

Formulating your test - Falsifiable hypothesis

How many people should you talk to? 12 

How do we make sense of the world so we can act in it? Dave Snowden. Karl Weick. Basically, you need to go through the social process of sense making as a team. Post it notes with ideas that are then cluttered or broken up into four groups of feasibility. 

Design thinking (IDEO). Develop a deep seated empathy for the people you're designing a solution for. 

Desirable, viability, feasible? Three overlapping constraints. 

eBibliofile case study

Problem exploration (identify early adopters because they're going to be very forgiving)

Posted to list serves to see if others had this problem

Interviewed respondees

Solution validation 

Produced first solution in 2 weeks since start of project and early adopters approved

Scaling

Are serving more than 300 libs in less than a year

Boundless case study

The library homepage and PAC is not a main part of our customers' online life and that's a huge problem. Libraries need to be contributing valuable interactions in online spaces where their customers spend their time.

Found ugly library websites and called those libraries

Asked them a out their sites

Built a Wordpress template based on what the libs told them told tlc in 2 weeks

Launched MVP to gather learnings (minimal viable product)

"Safe to fail" experiments. 

7 Steps for Libraries

The Customer Service workshop went over the keys to great customer service.  The first goal is to make service a top priority.  Attitude is another key to great customer service.  Treat the patron as if they are your boss.  The third key is to be consistent.  The final key is to work as a team.  Look good in front of your customers. 

Pickles!

Mou Chakraborty and Sharon Payne
June 17, 2013

"Give 'em the pickle!" has always been my customer service style, although I had never thought of it in terms of food. Breaking customer service down to the four areas: Service, Attitude, Consistency, and Teamwork is a useful way of analyzing one's service philosophy and practices.The exercise of identifying pickles from the library and from individuals was interesting- it was easier to identify pickles from the library.  I want to work on our consistency within the branch by identifying our pickles and making sure we are all offering them. A few other suggestions I picked up include offering laptops and eReaders for inhouse use, which I hope to implement in the near future. This was another great workshop offered by WMRL, and I highly recommend it.

One of the best pieces of advice I took from this workshop (I found myself using this over and over this week) was telling myself "I like this person! I am going to make this person happy." instead of giving in to my normal internal groan when people walked up to the desk.  (It's been a tough week). But tonight I am serving up lots of pickles-sweet and dill- as part of our Teens-After-Hours Hobbit feast! And I know they are appreciated!

Give A Pickle, Get A Smile !!! The Workshop

Give A Pickle, Get A Smile!

The Workshop

 

Submitted by Delissa Key

The four key principles to getting customers to return:

•   Make serving others your top priority….find out what the customer wants/needs (that’s the pickle) 

Staff must feel empowered to offer special touches

• Attitude

Customers are the boss.

You are the face of your company/organization.

• Consistency

   Set high standards.

   What is “non-negotiable”?

•   Teamwork…group of people who go out of their way to make each other look good.

How would you define Customer Service?

• Putting the customer first.

•   Give them what they want/need (first you have find out what they want/need)

•   Do more than listen…HEAR!!!!

•   Greet and acknowledge

•   Have the courage to make things right.

•   Follow-up