Lessons in Project Management

For our project we have a small but highly capable project management team–myself and Nancy Friedland. A number of our team’s meetings have also included Alex Gil, our Digital Scholarship Coordinator, who is something of an ex officio member.

Initially, I viewed the role of project manager with some misgivings. Does this person go around when elements of the project are due, knocking on people’s doors, and saying (like T.S. Eliot’s anonymous pub keeper) ‘HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME’?

Happily, our experience has been quite different from that. Each team has embraced its tasks with energy and true inventiveness. A real synergy has developed to the point at which I feel qualified to sketch out four lessons in project management.

  1. Think carefully about what needs to be accomplished for the initial launch of the project. Make sure that all of these tasks (and nothing more) are covered in the timeline of task deadlines. Devote time, thought, and expertise to considering how tasks relate to one another (for example, does one necessarily precede another, does one need to be accomplished along with another) and which tasks belong to which teams.
  2. Open up the project timeline to a group discussion with all project participants. Be open to adding, redefining, or reordering tasks as needed. Let participants develop a sense of ownership in the project timeline.
  3. Listen, observe, encourage. It is key that teams meet on their own time in order to accomplish tasks. Nevertheless, a regular schedule of group meetings with all participants remains essential. This is where teams can report on their progress, listen to one another, ask for feedback from the group, and demonstrate accomplishments.
  4. Facilitate synergy.
John L. Tofanelli

Author: John L. Tofanelli

John is Columbia’s Librarian for British and American History and Literature. His research interests include literature and religion in 18th- and 19th- century Great Britain, textual criticism, and book history. He has enjoyed the chance to explore the early architectural history of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine.