Difference between revisions of "Project Goals"

Revision as of 11:19, August 14, 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?

• Journals article 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