Managing a Complex Partnership ProjectMuseums and the Web 2009

Carolyn Royston, NMOLP

Aims of the Workshop

• Focus on 3 areas:– Understanding your partnership

– Gaining commitment and working with constraints

– Legacy and sustainability

About me

• First time I had worked in the public sector• Previously 10 years experience as Head of e-

Learning in a UK new media agency• Teacher

• What question(s) about partnership working have brought you here?

About NMOLP

NMOLP – what is it?• Large-scale UK digital learning

project• Audiences are students, teachers

& lifelong learners• 9 UK national museums working

in partnership• First time national museums have

worked together collaboratively on public facing project

• 3 year project launched March ‘09

• Funded by the UK Government – Treasury Dept

• British Museum• Imperial War Museum• Natural History Museum• National Portrait Gallery• Royal Armouries• Sir John Soane’s Museum• Tate• Victoria and Albert Museum• Wallace Collection

Funding Criteria

• ‘Invest to Save’ budget:– No new website or portal– No new digitisation or curatorial content– Must be sustainable for at least 3 years post-

launch

What have we delivered for our audiences?

• Resources for schools (WebQuests)• Resources for lifelong learners (Creative Spaces)• Linking together 9 national collections via a cross-

collection search• Resources that can be used & shared across all 9

national museums• Engaging new and existing audiences with museum

digital collections

This is what we made

• WebQuests

• Creative Spaces

Issues when I started

Issues when I started

• Implementation plan written and funding provided• Partnership already determined by project funding• Technical solution promised but implementation not

scoped out• Content deliverables outlined but not fully defined

Issues when I started

• Visited every partner for fact-finding• Discovered different expectations about what the

project would deliver for each partner:– Institutional– Departmental– Individuals

Focus on Partnership

• Decided initially to focus on partnership and ways of working rather than technology and deliverables

Most important lesson I learnt:

It’s not about technology, it’s about people.

Focussed on…• Developed collective aims and objectives for project

• Managing expectations from the start– What this project will deliver and what it won’t deliver

• Establishing people’s commitment to the project– Not just showing up at meetings – active participation

• What were the potential barriers to success for:– Institution

– Departments

– Individuals

Focussed on…

• Setting up clear lines of communication• Understanding that milestones and deadlines have

to be met otherwise they impact on everyone• Gaining advocacy – being a project champion in your

organisation• How will you embed the project – think about

sustainability and legacy early on

Why was this important?

• Partners needed to take responsibility for the project in their own institutions

• I couldn’t solve their institutional issues• What I could do was provide space in the project for

those issues to be shared and discussed– Enabled us in many cases to find collective solutions and

offer support– Built relationships between partner representatives– Ownership of project brought more commitment from

partners

Building commitment• How do you gain commitment from people in the project?

– Assigning different roles and responsibilities for people

– Having different types of meetings e.g. practical workshops – giving people opportunities to input into developments and ideas

– Creating resources so they understand the challenges

– Setting realistic deadlines – gaining momentum and keep project moving forward

– Acknowledging achievements along the way – however small

– Being transparent about your decisions, not afraid to course correct when things don’t work out

– Be the leader of the project – the vision holder

Activity 2

On the basis that it’s about people not technology

• What do I need to do differently in my partnership?– Meetings– Communication– Expectations of people and what they can deliver– Represent the project in my organisation

Working with Constraints

Working with constraints

• Lots of constraints on this project:– Number of stakeholders and meetings– Different capabilities and capacities– Technical differences– Copyright restrictions– Brand conflicts– Marketing and PR conflicts– Sustainability issues

Working with constraints

• Build in time to deal with each issue and be decisive about ways forward – need agreement on how to tackle these issues

Q&A

• Questions about gaining commitment and working with constraints?

Legacy

• Needs to be built into original project plan• Re-visited throughout project• Sustainability plan for technology• Sustainability plan for partnership

– How will the project continue to be managed? And who will do it?– How will decisions be made?– What happens after the evaluation?– How do you disseminate what you have learnt?– How does the project impact on future developments both within the

sector and outside?

Post-its

• Have we covered all questions that we asked at the beginning?

New thoughts

• What new thoughts have you got about your partnership projects?

Carolyn Roystoncroyston@blueyonder.co.uk