Introduction to Process Maturity by Michael Edson.
From the description:
Museum Web and New Media software projects offer tantalizing rewards, but the road to success can be paved with uncertainty and risk. To small organizations these risks can be overwhelming, and even large organizations with seemingly limitless resources can flounder in ways that profoundly affect staff morale, public impact, the health and fitness of our partners in the vendor community, and our own bottom lines. Something seems to happen between the inception of projects, when optimism and beneficial outcomes seem clear and attainable, and somewhere down the road when schedules, budgets, and outcomes go off course. What is it? And what can we do to gain control?
This paper, created for the 2008 annual conference of the American Association of Museums, describes some common ways that technology projects get into trouble. It examines a proven project-process framework called the Capability Maturity Model and how that model can provide insight and guidance to museum leaders and project participants, and it tells how to improve real-world processes that contribute to project success. The paper includes three brief case studies and a call-to-action which argues that museum leaders should make technology stewardship an urgent priority.
The intended audience is people who are interested in understanding and improving how museum-technology gets done. The paper’s primary focus is Web and New Media software projects, but the core ideas are applicable to projects of all kinds.
In web time it may seem like process advice from 2008 must be dated.
Not really, consider the following description of the then current federal government’s inability to complete technology projects:
As systems become increasingly complex, successful software development becomes increasingly difficult. Most major system developments are fraught with cost, schedule, and performance shortfalls. We have repeatedly reported on costs rising by millions of dollars, schedule delays of not months but years, and multibillion-dollar systems that don’t perform as envisioned.
The problem wasn’t just that the government couldn’t complete software projects on time or on budget, or that it couldn’t predict which projects it was currently working on would succeed or fail—though these were both significant and severe problems—but most worrisome from my perspective is that it couldn’t figure out which new projects it was capable of doing in the future. If a business case or museum mission justifies an investment in technology that justification is based on the assumption that the technology can be competently implemented. If instead the assumption is that project execution is a crap shoot, the business case and benefit-to-mission arguments crumble and managers are stuck, unable to move forward (because of the risk of failure) and unable to not move forward because business and mission needs still call.
There is no shortage of process/project management advice but I think Edson captures the essence needed for process/project success:
- Honestly assess your current processes and capabilities
- Improve processes and capabilities one level at a time
Very much worth your time.