Final Paper for LIS 590 MGL – Project Management for Library and Information Science (Summer, 2012)
A Matter of Perspective
Introduction:
Sometimes a project that seems as though it must be a huge one-time, or at least complicated, project turns out to be much more common and simpler to implement than expected by an observer. At least, it may be simpler for major organizations that actually routinely do similar projects on at least a cycle of every few years. This turned out to be the case when I interviewed the project manager for a major library-wide update of over 600 hundred staff computers. From what I knew about the project, and from my readings from this class, I expected it to be relatively formally managed and something that would require a fairly substantial amount of attention, time, and oversight, offering the opportunity for me to see how an IT project manager uses project management tools in practice. As it turns out, it was actually a pretty involved but straight-forward project for the implementing IT department, and utilized no formal project management techniques at all. Nevertheless, from speaking with the project manager I learned a lot about what I, as a novice project manager operating my first project of even a smaller scale, might want to do when implementing a similar type of project in a different venue.
Paige Cunningham 