Project Management and Collaboration

Megan Kudzia, Digital Scholarship Librarian, Michigan State University

Kate Topham, Digital Humanities Archivist, Michigan State University

Description

This workshop goes beyond “how did they make that” into “how can I do this?“, offering a practical guide to starting, growing, and sustaining your DH project. Undertaking a digital project can be overwhelming, but with the right strategies, these challenges can be met with confidence. Participants will get an introductory grounding in what project management is and how it applies in academia, and will get specific examples of tools and practices that can help any project progress more quickly and realize its potential.

Slides

Direct link to Google Slides

PDF of slides: Project Management for DH Projects.pdf

Additional Resources, Readings, and Tools

Resources

• Draft Project Charter Template - created by Robin Dean at the MSU Libraries in Spring 2019. This is a broad overview of what needs to happen for a project and what the project is.
• Project Charter Template, Stewart Varner - created by Stewart Varner when he was at Emory, with Brian Croxall, Miriam Posner, and Roger Whitson. It's pretty fabulous, and talks about why you might want to do this.
• Project Open and Close Checklists - Excellent resource from the folks at MIT Libraries that deals with the nitty-gritty of what needs to happen when starting and stopping a project, from the perspective of their Digital Library Services folks.
• DLF Project Managers' Toolkit - from their 'WHAT' section, "A crowdsourced collection of information, tips, techniques, and tools for project managers working in digital libraries. Please contribute and share your knowledge."
• DLF Project Managers' Group - I'm not sure how active this is presently, but these are folks doing the work at other institutions who are a great resource and support group!
• Emory University's Project Management 4 DH - walks you through the phases of a project
• The Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap and its companion Airtable template - an excellent resource for thinking through how you will set your project up sustainably.

Readings

• Kanban 101 for Trello - the language is oriented at software development, but this lays out really well how to actually use Trello to introduce Kanban practices
• Personal Kanban - a great book on how to do this for yourself

Tools

• Airtable - when what you need is more robust than a spreadsheet, but you don't exactly need a database yet, Airtable has you covered. It's collaborative, great at letting you sort and facet your data, and has lots of templates to help you get started, including a whole set of templates specific to project management!
• Trello - an excellent task and project management tool, for individuals or for teams.