Difference between revisions of "Project Goals"

Latest revision as of 04:57, August 19, 2012

Project Goals

Editorial history

08/08/12: WT, created page

Purpose of this page

This page sets out the primary goals of the project. It also suggests standards by which we should measure our performance against these goals and seeks a discussion of these proposed standards and measurement processes with the project team

Suggested links

Project Goals

What have we said?

Our website: "MarineLives is an innovative academic project for the collaborative transcription, linkage and enrichment of primary manuscripts, which were originated in the High Court of Admiralty, London, 1650-1669. The end product will be a publicly and freely available online academic edition."

Two primary goals

• Content: Delivery of a public and freely available online academic edition (within reasonable time)

• Process: Develop and demonstrate effective innovative approach to collaborative transcription, linkage and enrichment of primary documents

Suggested standards

Content

• Quality of textual output

• Quantity of textual output

Process

• Creativeness, effectiveness and efficiency of project process

Energy

• Unanticipated benefits

Possible measurement

Content

• Nominate named expert individuals in advance, not directly involved in the project, to assess the quality of the content?

- Who?

• Benchmark the quality and quantity of the content against other reference content; the reference content to be agreed in advance?

- What content? How define quality?

• Willingness of academics to formally cite content from MarineLives project?

• Self-evaluation by team members of quality of content?

Process

• Creativeness:

- Evaluation by named expert individuals of project processes?
- Self-evaluation by team members of creativity of project processes?

• Effectiveness:

- Deliver desired content goals?
- Objective feedback solicited from team members following conclusion of the project regarding the project experience?

• Efficiency:

- Output relative to input costs (total monetary costs; and money equivalent of volunteer time and other resources voluntarily made available to the project)?
- Extent to which rework is avoided in the project?

Energy

• Undergraduate dissertation topics influenced by involvement of undergraduate project associates in MarineLives?

• Journal articles submitted and approved making reference to the MarineLives project?

• Year thirteen student admissions to university assisted by involvement of school students in MarineLives?

• Potential funders (individuals and/or companies and/or institutions) approach core team following project seeking to explore possible funding of a project extension or project spinoff?

• Desire of project participants to work together again?

Questions to project team

• Should we set any targets before we start the project, other than "achieving our goals"

• If we decide we want to set targets, should they be targets at the level of the total project, or at the level of the facilitator supported teams, or at an individual level?

• Should we set ourselves an initial transcription target and an "up to speed" transcription target to (a) help plan the amount of volunteer resource we need and (b) to help evaluate the effectiveness of our training processes? My experience of good operational or business processes is that it helps to think in some detail about them, but that that doesn't mean that you use this thinking or benchmarks to "control" or "manage" a project. Far from it. I find that good productivity comes from soft factors like clear goals, good training, and a fun experience with plenty of communication, and that these sustained motivation and application

• How should we expect productivity and behaviours of individuals and teams to change over fourteen week project?

Comments

2012-08-13 11:22:24 nbsp Stuart, do you have data from your AHRC crowdsourcing literature review or May workship which will help us think about our productivity targets and productivity variance between indviduals, teams, and over time? What benchmark projects would you suggest we think about? --Users/ColinGreenstreet

2012-08-13 20:49:13 nbsp I just read today's email conversation on productivity and I believe that the productivity will vary from person to person (and therefore from team to team). I, for example, am unable to estimate how busy I will be each week (I don't know about my deadlines, schedules etc yet) & I think that other student will be in a similar situation.
Therefore, I think it is probably the best idea to try and set realistic "minimum goals" per team per week, which will enable the team to sufficiently participate in the transcriptions without creating conflicting deadlines or priorities.

I'm looking forward to hearing other people's thoughts, suggestions.. --Users/sarahlaseke

2012-08-14 12:19:59 nbsp I have rewritten the questions to the project team about targets. Comments and concrete suggestions appreciated, especially if you can draw on your personal experience of transcription, or on working on other team based projects, whether academic, voluntary, or business based --Users/ColinGreenstreet

2012-08-14 13:01:04 nbsp *I think weekly facilitator supported team targets would be useful: e.g. every Friday each team sets goals for the next week, taking into account upcoming conflicting priorities of each team member (holiday, deadlines), so they can split the work accordingly. I am currently involved in a book move at the V&A. In a group of 4 we are responsible for moving the library's special collections to new cupboards. Each week we take into account who is there and who isn't and plan our next steps. We usually only work on it one morning per week so every week we write up a report on the process and discuss how much we will be able to do in the following week (e.g. we all have no other duties on day X so we can meet then and get more done because on our usual day one person is on annual leave).

• I think productivity and behaviours of individuals WILL change over the fourteen weeks, it could even be weekly, so setting weekly goals will help teams to take these changes into account --Users/sarahlaseke

2012-08-14 16:49:46 nbsp Hi Sarah, Your comments about your own experience at the V&A ring true with me as I think about a variety of projects I have worked on. It will be especially true of MarineLives, as a volunteer project, that available people/hours per week within a facilitator supported team are likely to vary significantly between weeks. That is how it should be, since we are all squeezing these volunteer hours in between other priorities.

Key, I would suggest to target setting, is that it should be at the facilitator team level, as you suggest Sarah, and should basically be an offering up (and commitment) of hours that week. Some of us will have easier text pages to work on in a particular week than others, so I would suggest it is meaningless to say that one team is "more productive than others" in terms of output per input time. But that is not to say that some teams might find themselves more effective and creative than others.

I think we should encourage an atmosphere where we as teams want to spread news of what works for us, to the benefit of the other teams. For example, it is not obvious to me in advance, whether a first pass transcription by a project assocaite should be read and commented on by the team facilitator, or whether it might be better process to have a "buddy" on the team take a look at it and provide helpful suggestions, in return for the same from the same buddy, or from others on the team. This would take the pressure off the facilitator, and avoid the facilitator being a bottle neck.

It is also not obvious to me in advance how to use Charlene's scarece but expert palaeographical resources in terms of available hours. We will have a great project, and achieve one of the measurement standards I am suggesting (see "Project Goals"), if we are innovative in terms of our team processes. --Users/ColinGreenstreet