Defining project success

This post has been on my list of things to do since late last year... but alas it just kept getting pushed. I want to share a project management tool I recently learnt about called the Success Slider.
The idea is that, during project initiation, stakeholders get together and determine the relative importance of different success factors. Each slider dimension can be fully on (number 5), fully off (number 1) or somewhere in between.

Why do this? Well, it helps communicate the nuances of what stakeholders think are really important. The sliders above for example note that there is some flexibility on time, but not much on budget. It also notes that it is more important to provide added value to the business than rigidly follow objectives. Each project is different and I think that having a conversation up-front to define success is a good thing. This is a way to prompt that conversation.

The inclination of course is to push all the sliders across to fully on, and that is certainly an option. What this does though is raise the pressure, along with the risk that the project will fail. It signals the project is much harder. Project managers will usually aspire to hit 100% success (all factors fully on) in their projects, but if it is known that there is some leeway (or more importantly, none) I think it is better to know this up-front.

This slider was introduced to me in a presentation called the 7 habits of highly effective IT projects by Eduard Liebenberger during last year's Agile BarCamp. He gives a brief intro to each area of success:

• Stakeholder satisfaction: How important is it that all stakeholders are completely satisfied.
• Objectives: Do all objectives have to be met?
• Budget: Is there room for movement under the right conditions?
• Time: How rigid are the timelines?
• Added value: Typically not all objectives add equal value to the business (e.g. compliance requirements)
• Quality: Does the system have to be bullet-proof? Or is there room for defects in lesser used parts of the system?
• Team satisfaction: How important is it to keep the team happy (disgruntled team members might leave)?

This slider was adapted from one created by Rob Thomsett and you can get more information about the slider in this Computer World article.

Monday fun, geek style

If you think we spend our days toiling to build a National Digital Library, or researching blog posts, you're wrong.

We really spend our time telling tech jokes.

It all began with this winner from John Mansfield at Oxford University Press:

"Why did the attribute feel invalidated?"

So, with sincere apologies to those who don't speak XML or HTML, here is some Monday fun from Douglas and myself in the National Digital Library to keep your mind active.

1. <your>you're</your>

2. <poodle></poodle><labrador></labrador>

3. <out>turn it</out>

4. <!--NO-->

5. ^annie

6. <flu><fever></flu></fever>

7. <cumulonimbus></cumulonimbus>

8. <rivalry /><rivalry />

9. <100%></100%>

10. <transaction></t>

11. <the_apes><a><long><time><man /></time></long></a></the_apes>

12. <social>ing</social>

See if you can work out the answers - and feel free to leave them in the comments, along with any tech humour of your own.

The prize is to be crowned geek of the week - we'll post all the solutions soon.

Oh, and in case you didn't guess the punch line to John's joke, "because he wasn't in his element", of course! :-)

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

Introducing The Source

Software’s Future: Melding the Web and the Desktop

From the Knowledge@Wharton website

Until recently, most software ran entirely on the user’s computer. This so-called “desktop” software relies on the processing power of the individual user’s PC and provides the ability to store files locally on the user’s hard drive. While desktop software still dominates, the web has given rise to a new breed of application - exemplified by products like Google Docs, the company’s online word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software, and Salesforce.com’s enterprise sales-support products - that runs within a web browser. These “webtop” applications use the local computer only to run the web browser and a few basic extensions and use the processing power and storage of banks of computers accessed remotely over the Internet. But as this drive toward hybrid desktop/webtop software illustrates, there are limits to both approaches, and the future for software may be a blend of the best features of both.


Teens and Social Media (Note: PDF)

From the Pew Internet & American Life Project website

The use of social media – from blogging to online social networking to creation of all kinds of digital material – is central to many teenagers’ lives. Some 93% of teens use the internet, and more of them than ever are treating it as a venue for social interaction – a place where they can share creations, tell stories, and interact with others.


A three-year study on the freshness of Web search engine databases (Note: PDF)

From the E-LIS website

This paper deals with one aspect of the index quality of search engines: index freshness. The purpose is to analyse the update strategies of the major Web search engines Google, Yahoo, and MSN/Live.com. We conducted a test of the updates of 40 daily updated pages and 30 irregularly updated pages, respectively. We used data from a time span of six weeks in the years 2005, 2006, and 2007. We found that the best search engine in terms of up-to-dateness changes over the years and that none of the engines has an ideal solution for index freshness.


Perpetual Access to Electronic Journals: A Survey of One Academic Research Library's Licenses (Note: PDF)

From the E-LIS website

A perpetual access right to an electronic journal, defined as the right to permanently access licensed materials paid for during the period of a license agreement (not to be confused with the right to copy journal content solely for preservation purposes), is a concern of increasing importance to librarians as academic libraries discontinue paper subscriptions and retain electronic-only access. This paper explores the current environment for perpetual access to electronic journals.

Flickr and Library of Congress launch 'The Commons'

Flickr and the Library of Congress have announced The Commons, a partnership project aimed at getting users involved with historical images. From Flickr:

Back in June of 2007, we began our first collaboration with a civic institution to facilitate giving people a voice in describing the content of a publicly-held photography collection.

The key goals of this pilot project are to firstly give you a taste of the hidden treasures in the huge Library of Congress collection, and secondly to how your input of a tag or two can make the collection even richer.

The pilot involves two sets of images ‘1930s-1940s in Colour’ and ‘News in the 1910s’. Flickr users are being encouraged to add tags and comments to the images in the sets.

Of course, collecting institutions adding their images to Flickr is nothing new. Hey – even we’re doing it. What caught our attention here (apart from the publicity push) is the new copyright statement that Flickr and LOC are using:

These beautiful, historic pictures from the Library represent materials for which the Library is not the intellectual property owner. Flickr is working with the Library of Congress to provide an appropriate statement for these materials. It's called "no known copyright restrictions."

This is based on one of the LOC copyright statements , which applies to (a) items for which there was a copyright, which has not been renewed, and (b) for images from the late 19th and early 20th centuries for which there is no evidence of a rights holder. At the moment, only LOC can use this statement on Flickr. According to The Commons page:

For the time being on Flickr this new usage is being contained to the Library of Congress account. If the pilot works - or, when it works! - we'll look to allow other interested cultural institutions the opportunity to extend the application of "no known restrictions" to their catalogues.

Of course, after processing all this, the first thing that sprung to our minds was – can we be part of this? Short answer: no. Longer answer: Flickr is gauging demand from other collecting institutions, and you can register your interest by emailing flickr-commons [at] yahoo-inc.com. So - what are your thoughts? Do you want to join The Commons? We've emailed for more information, and we'll share what we learn here.

More reports on the launch at TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb.