Digital projects, as much as a new exhibition or capital project, need effective real-world project management. And with the expertise often not found in-house, making sure that things stay on track and within budget is a challenging task.
For museum staff planning a digital project, the most important thing is to make sure that the project’s aims and budget are clear. Not knowing exactly how you might get there is fine – that is why you might consider hiring agencies or freelance producers – but maintaining focus on the final product and how it will be used is crucial.
“The only rules that run through all organisations are: give it careful thought, and make sure you have a delivery model,” says Charles Bodsworth, the assistant director for digital transformation at Imperial War Museums (IWM).
The right delivery model will depend hugely on organisations’ particular circumstances, says Bodsworth. “Some museums have a completely internal digital development team, and others are completely outsourced. At IWM, we are pursuing what we describe as a hybrid model, where we do seek the support of agencies but integrate that as much as possible with our relatively limited in-house team.”
IWM’s hybrid model “worked really well” for its website redevelopment, an 18-month project which launched in January 2018, says Bodsworth. “We'd been struggling with delivering to the standard IWM wanted with a really small in-house team – one developer, a designer, and a product manager – so we effectively embedded our people so that they were part of a larger team of developers who were working on the website.
“We sometimes sent our developer and designer to their offices, but we mainly tried to handle it electronically by Skype and other means, so there was a virtual team – for cost reasons and to not have our team ground down by travelling.”
In the museum sector, a large project such as a website redesign is unlikely to be run entirely in-house, but smaller projects may be, from producing digital projections for an exhibition to analysing and improving the experience of buying tickets online.
External expertise
As soon as external agencies or freelance producers are brought on board, the level of complexity and need for good project management – in the form of planning, flexibility and communication – increases. The lack of expertise that leads museums to need help from outside can also sometimes cause problems.
A new project can quickly fall into trouble without the early involvement of an experienced digital professional, says freelance digital producer Jane Audas. “So many assumptions can be made, about everything,” says Audas, and this can lead to problems that will have to be fixed later in the project.
“I'm always advocating to get people like me on board as early as possible in the project – and I'm still losing that battle! I personally would much rather clients got me in for odd days to help with the initial story. I think I've had enough experience to help people make the most of their budgets, whatever they may be, if you let me in early enough.”
For digital elements in exhibitions, Audas says, “when the 3D design starts to form it's essential that you've got somebody who knows a bit about digital, for the technical aspects of things like large projections or film installations.”
“From my experience digital has gone from being the last bit of budget that was left and therefore we can make something digital – which was happening for years – to planning halfway through the project and we now know we need to get someone digital on board.”
Share objectives
According to Bodsworth, at the IWM, “one problem we've come across is a lack of understanding among key stakeholders about what a project is for: the specifics of what a piece of technology can or can't do.
“Where we've seen projects go wrong there's been a fundamental misunderstanding of that. A content management system can't make a good website; a customer relationship management system can't make a great customer relationship.”
Clarity about what the project is for is therefore important.“Complex sets of stakeholders, often with misaligned goals and expectations, are common in the sector,” says Simon Wakeman, the managing director of digital agency Deeson. “Having clear outcomes for the project is vital.”
The common factors in the most problematic projects that Wakeman has worked on are “a lack of clear and timely decision making, lack of clarity on desired outcomes, and shifting goalposts late in the project”.
Shifting sector
“When you talk to the commercial sector, they'll talk about their teams of 20 developers or whatever; whereas when we deliver something, it’s of quite high standard at relatively low cost. We're justifiably quite proud of that.”
Digital is becoming more and more central to museums’ work – for example, where digital teams may once have been part of a larger marketing team it is often now the other way round, with marketing being a part of digital.
The sector is generally shifting, says Audas, but there is still some way to go. “From my experience digital has gone from being the last bit of budget that was left, and therefore we can make something digital – which was happening for years – to planning halfway through the project and we now know we need to get someone digital on board.
“Being heard as a digital producer is important to me. I'd say it's about trust between the producer and the client, and also being heard in terms of the possibilities. If people will listen to you and not just make assumptions, you're going to get the best possible outcome for everybody.”
The Museums Association is running Museum Tech 2019: A Digital Festival for Museums on 27 June at the Museum of London, looking at how new technologies are shaping how audiences experience museums and their collections. For more and to book tickets, go to www.museumsassociation.org/events
For museum staff planning a digital project, the most important thing is to make sure that the project’s aims and budget are clear. Not knowing exactly how you might get there is fine – that is why you might consider hiring agencies or freelance producers – but maintaining focus on the final product and how it will be used is crucial.
“The only rules that run through all organisations are: give it careful thought, and make sure you have a delivery model,” says Charles Bodsworth, the assistant director for digital transformation at Imperial War Museums (IWM).
The right delivery model will depend hugely on organisations’ particular circumstances, says Bodsworth. “Some museums have a completely internal digital development team, and others are completely outsourced. At IWM, we are pursuing what we describe as a hybrid model, where we do seek the support of agencies but integrate that as much as possible with our relatively limited in-house team.”
As a rule, larger organisations would be more likely to have in-house teams, having more resources to employ specialists; and smaller ones would be more likely to contract out.
An advantage of having staff in-house is that they get to know the products they are working with and the work of the museum; the greater flexibility of outsourcing might mean working with people who do not know the institution or the sector as well, even if their technical capacity is crucial to the project.
IWM’s hybrid model “worked really well” for its website redevelopment, an 18-month project which launched in January 2018, says Bodsworth. “We'd been struggling with delivering to the standard IWM wanted with a really small in-house team – one developer, a designer, and a product manager – so we effectively embedded our people so that they were part of a larger team of developers who were working on the website.
“We sometimes sent our developer and designer to their offices, but we mainly tried to handle it electronically by Skype and other means, so there was a virtual team – for cost reasons and to not have our team ground down by travelling.”
In the museum sector, a large project such as a website redesign is unlikely to be run entirely in-house, but smaller projects may be, from producing digital projections for an exhibition to analysing and improving the experience of buying tickets online.
External expertise
As soon as external agencies or freelance producers are brought on board, the level of complexity and need for good project management – in the form of planning, flexibility and communication – increases. The lack of expertise that leads museums to need help from outside can also sometimes cause problems.
A new project can quickly fall into trouble without the early involvement of an experienced digital professional, says freelance digital producer Jane Audas. “So many assumptions can be made, about everything,” says Audas, and this can lead to problems that will have to be fixed later in the project.
“I'm always advocating to get people like me on board as early as possible in the project – and I'm still losing that battle! I personally would much rather clients got me in for odd days to help with the initial story. I think I've had enough experience to help people make the most of their budgets, whatever they may be, if you let me in early enough.”
For digital elements in exhibitions, Audas says, “when the 3D design starts to form it's essential that you've got somebody who knows a bit about digital, for the technical aspects of things like large projections or film installations.”
“From my experience digital has gone from being the last bit of budget that was left and therefore we can make something digital – which was happening for years – to planning halfway through the project and we now know we need to get someone digital on board.”
Share objectives
According to Bodsworth, at the IWM, “one problem we've come across is a lack of understanding among key stakeholders about what a project is for: the specifics of what a piece of technology can or can't do.
“Where we've seen projects go wrong there's been a fundamental misunderstanding of that. A content management system can't make a good website; a customer relationship management system can't make a great customer relationship.”
Clarity about what the project is for is therefore important.“Complex sets of stakeholders, often with misaligned goals and expectations, are common in the sector,” says Simon Wakeman, the managing director of digital agency Deeson. “Having clear outcomes for the project is vital.”
The common factors in the most problematic projects that Wakeman has worked on are “a lack of clear and timely decision making, lack of clarity on desired outcomes, and shifting goalposts late in the project”.
“Where you haven't got a clear shared vision of what a project's going to do you can easily get into a tug of war between people trying to push it in different directions,” says Bodsworth.
“Sometimes that can be confused with agile working [a theory of working which prioritises flexibility]. But if you don't have a shared objective that you can return to, that's not agile – that's just a project waiting to go wrong.”
Shifting sector
How museums in particular resource digital projects is a key consideration. “To a degree we always have to cut corners because we're under lots of financial pressure,” says Bodsworth, “We're always looking to run as lean an operation as we possibly can.
Digital is becoming more and more central to museums’ work – for example, where digital teams may once have been part of a larger marketing team it is often now the other way round, with marketing being a part of digital.
That has implications for staff across an organisation, says Bodwsorth. “We're now running a much more ambitious programme of digital projects, rolling that out much more widely, so we're having to do a lot of thinking about how we coach staff – the people who ultimately benefit from projects to improve digital access to membership, or ticketing on mobile and so that they can be participants in that semi-agile development process.
"It’s important they understand that they will need to make decisions, take part in review meetings, collaborate in testing, all kinds of things.”
The sector is generally shifting, says Audas, but there is still some way to go. “From my experience digital has gone from being the last bit of budget that was left, and therefore we can make something digital – which was happening for years – to planning halfway through the project and we now know we need to get someone digital on board.
“Being heard as a digital producer is important to me. I'd say it's about trust between the producer and the client, and also being heard in terms of the possibilities. If people will listen to you and not just make assumptions, you're going to get the best possible outcome for everybody.”
The Museums Association is running Museum Tech 2019: A Digital Festival for Museums on 27 June at the Museum of London, looking at how new technologies are shaping how audiences experience museums and their collections. For more and to book tickets, go to www.museumsassociation.org/events
