Project management, Agile Projection, empowerment, budget proposals, incremental progress, effective team collaboration, stakeholders, meetings…SCRUM? What is this? Am I back in the Air Force drinking the buzzword stew? Yes and no. This week’s readings made my eyes glaze over, not because they weren’t helpful, but because they were and they reminded me of a not so distant past where I had to manage (small) projects of my own. As much as the Edin Tabak article made good plain sense (especially in the context of Digital Humanities) I found it to be a difficult read. I think when it comes to managing a project this sort of article is best coupled with being a junior partner on an actual project. Without real world context it can be insufferable to slog through. Especially with sentences like this: “this will enable a progressive and incremental cycle of creative uncertainties and their provisional closures, presented through the modular deliverables” (Tabak, para 26).
This is why I was thankful that our in-class exercise of playing with the PM website BaseCamp. Our group made quick work of plugging in all the info for our “project” for NEH funding. The context of the in-class activities helped solidify some of the ideas in Tabak’s article.
But I also felt like I was being sold something. Promises of the most efficient way to manage my project sounds so innocuous, possibly even a positive good, but I still felt like my attention was the product. Or if I’m not being sold something I feel like I was the one being managed. Maybe, contrarian that I am, I do not want to do what I do faster, perhaps the “sitting” with the research questions or the sources or the conversation between my colleagues is something that cannot be scheduled or iterated or channeled so forcefully. Reflection cannot be scheduled so simply. Perhaps I need to walk around with my dog about where to go with my project. I recognize I am coming from a place of tremendous privilege; I currently do not have to fight for grant money, I do not have a huge project I am working on, just some ideas that interest me and will haunt me for my life. For instance, my (potential) thesis idea about how the landscape operates on the human person (both in body and soul) and how the reverse is true, that humans operate on the land, the physicality and unity of it (and what it says about us), won’t be contained in a project. It will haunt me forever, this wonderful question about how we interact with and change the land and are changed by it. It has an expression in history, but it can’t be contained in one historical project and therefore it can’t be scheduled or to-do-listed or even put into words perfectly. It defies management. Or maybe it’s just an excuse for me to whine.
In the end I think I will hold this information on Project Management with a light touch. There were great lessons to learn in this module about prioritization and deadline setting, plus the information on Collaboration from the Gabrielle Griffin and Matt Steven Hayler on how creative projects can be better at team efforts. So while I probably will refrain from adopting most of the technical aspects of Project Management into my individual studies I think doing so in a group setting makes sense.
Here are some landscapes I’ve seen recently that I enjoyed —
4 replies on “Perfect Naming Convention_BlogPost_use_final”
Hi Jess! I LOVE this post. I am very much on the same page about the readings and your thoughts about being the “thing” that is organized. I think for me, there are spaces where I definitely need structure, perhaps more in Data Management, but I love your point about walking around with your dog to figure out your project or ideas. I think a lot of us have something similar and our guardrails shouldn’t have to get rid of those processes… maybe it requires an individualized approach to management tools?
Hi Jess!
I really enjoyed reading your take on BaseCamp and project management as a whole. I think it is important that you brought up your (potential) thesis and how a project such as that cannot be placed into a cute little software box to be managed, because well as you said, it cannot be to-do listed or scheduled. I had an opposite experience where I really liked BaseCamp (so please don’t hate me if I think we should use it in other class of our upcoming group project *inserts anxious laughing emoji here*). I think it really depends on the individual and the project when determine if programs like this would be beneficial. More complex projects might not be able to fit exactly into a system like BaseCamp, but I do think the software can still be useful in setting a relaxed timeline at least. BaseCamp would be great for a project like writing a book with a central and simple topic/thesis. On another note, thank you for those beautiful landscape photographs. I really like the purple sunset one, makes me think of the cotton candy skies at the beaches in Florida.
Your comments about the Tabek article rang particularly true. Much of the information sat in my head like a heavy meal, and I actually began to digest it when it was put into practice during our small group discussion. To be honest, I read the article and convinced myself that I had never had any project management experience. However, during our small group discussions, I realized that my background working in theater and running political campaigns had, in reality, given me a lot of experience in this area. Still, most of the skills I used were learned on the fly and never gathered as neatly as in the Tabek article.
Based on this blog post, much like mine, your mind needs room to wander to be productive, a step in the process that can be difficult to fit into a schedule. However, I did have a moment of clarity on this subject listening to Luis Miranda talking about managing his son’s schedule:
“One of the things that I have learned mostly over the last year in working closely with Lin-Manuel, and with him having so many balls in the air. It’s that initially the way we handle it was “Okay. He could work on Encanto from 11-1, Uh, and is going to work on Tick, Tick, Boom from this time to this time,” to realize that’s not the way the creative process works, probably for anybody and certainly not for Lin-Manuel. Yeah. And sort of working hard now with the team and say, “okay, two days and [inaudible] don’t put anything else. Let him just marinate, whatever he has in his head. And even if he’s doing nothing but eating chocolate cake, let him eat chocolate cake because that’s how he’s going to be marinated; the next song he needs.”
(https://www.ted.com/podcasts/taken-for-granted-lin-manuel-miranda-daydreams-and-his-dad-gets-things-done-transcript)
Listening to this interview removed some of the guilt I felt when “just thinking about stuff” instead of actively checking things off a list. The mind works in unusual ways and sometimes it just needs to percolate on a subject to get to the answer. If people were aware of the number of times that I talked to myself in the car trying to figure out an answer to a big question while driving my kids around, they’d lock me up.
Finally, I don’t know if you’ve read it or not, but Changes in the Land, by William Cronon is a fantastic environmental history about the interactions between colonists, Native Americans, and the land.
Hi Jess,
I resonate with a lot of what you’re saying. This week’s reading really needed a real-world experience to make it click for me. I’m a hands-on learner, which is why I really enjoy the technical aspects of our class. I also struggle with the idea of being told when and how to work on my project. I have a certain comfort level with how I execute most of my work, so I understand the hesitation to adopt a new system. It feels like a push to change what’s already been working for me. I do appreciate the inclusion of new programs that are built to hold one accountable for their own aspects of a project. I feel like in a group setting I would be more open to the use of programs like Basecamp, just not for my personal projects.