The Wake

As you’ll be aware if you’ve been following any of the team on twitter, sadly JISC decided that SM@LL wasn’t to be one of their funded projects.  I won’t say this wasn’t a bit disappointing as everyone of the team has put their heart and soul into this one, above and beyond the call of duty I would say. 

It hasn’t been in any respect a waste of our time, both work and real-life time has been spent engaging with this one, of that I am most sure.  The debates we’ve had over functionality over brand requirements were certainly illuminating and engaging.  I for one have especially enjoyed the close camaraderie I’ve formed with the project pigs.  I’m just sorry I won’t get to apply SCRUM methodology to our project, as I was looking forward to hanging a rubber chicken around someone’s neck.

It’s also seen us elevate the use of twitter to an art form (unlike most of the bids) embracing the concept of openness in our discussions on the blog and on twitter.  It proved a useful channel to discuss the issues not just with our project maters but the world at large.  It’s a shame we didn’t see that from more of the bidders, and indeed I’ll be interested to see which of the successful bids have really engaging with the community.  Actually I’ll be really interested to follow the progress of the other bids and their outputs.

I’ll be blogging again once I hear feedback from JISC, which after some delay we should be getting next week.  But in the meantime we are looking at carrying forward elements of the SM@LL project in some new form.  It will, by practical necessity, be a much smaller endeavour and spread across a longer period of time.  But hopefully if we’re approved to go ahead with it, should provide a very rich enhancement to the way we support research information at Leicester.

But that’s for the future, for now a moments electronic silence for the passing of a possibility.

SM@LL Project Team – Gareth Johnson

Continuing the introductions of the project team.

I’m, well the name above really and currently I’m the Information Librarian for Physical & Biological Sciences and the LRAManager, and I’ve been at Leicester since Feb 08.  Prior to this I’ve been a Repository Development Officer working for JISC and SHERPA, a Research Innovation Officer and a plain old Subject Librarian too.  I’ve also been a pharmaceutical researcher, a kitchen assistant and an assistant sales manager.  Working for libraries is something I fell into, but it’s been kinda interesting over the years.  I’m a sought after conference speaker too, which is something I really relish doing.

As a trained biomedical technologist and part time computer geek I’m very keen to work on and with new software/hardware/systems; which is why this project is of particular interest to me.  As prospective Project Manager as well, it’ll be nice to focus my prior project running experiences in Open Access on the LIS sector more directly.  As well as overseeing the project, I’ll be very hands on involved in practically every aspect of it from week zero to 24, and beyond.

You can find me on various social media sites, but probably the most relevent one is twitter. A lot of the details of this project bid were thrashed out on twitter, and it continues to be the primary location for keeping the team connected.

SM@ll Project Team – Sarah Whittaker

 

Sarah Whittaker

Just to add to the introductions…

I’m Sarah Whittaker, since 2006 I’ve been the Information Librarian for Cardiovascular Sciences, Cell Physiology and Pharmacology, Physiotherapy, and one of a team that supports Leicester Medical School, based in the Clinical Sciences Library at Leicester University.  

In previous lives I originally did a degree and a masters in music and a variety of day jobs in between and after before settling in library land.  My first library qualified job was for PriceWaterhouseCoopers before coming to the University of Leicester to work on the (sadly no longer funded) Outreach Library Project for NHS staff in the community.

I’ve always preferred to be involved in the experimental side of things and in terms of web 2.0 I’ve recently been involved in an innovative project with Alan Cann in using web 2.0 to cultivate information literacy in a medical ethics course.  In the Medical School we’ve also been looking at ways to using wikis with our medical students during their information training with us.

During the SM@LL project I’m looking forward to finding out how we can customize ‘useful stuff’ (technical term) for our researchers, rather than providing lists of resources.  

You can find me online as Whittybus on Twitter and Delicious and I sometimes manage to blog on the UoL Libraryblog.

Thats enough for now.

SCRUMmy meeting1

Just emerged from out first proto-SCRUM for the ScienceLeicester project, looking at the final elements that need editing in the bid (thankfully few – I’ve lived and breathed this thing for a month now) and out plans on what to do in the meanwhile as we wait to hear back from JISC.  If nothing else it’ll keep the elements of what we’re hoping work on fresh and active in our minds, and ensure that (hopefully) we’ll be ready to roll forward into the project proper ASAP.

And what will we be doing?  Keep your eyes peeled on Wednesday when we start to talk about the work in a bit more detail.

SCRUM

A pig and a chicken are walking down a road. The chicken looks at the pig and says, “Hey, why don’t we open a restaurant?” The pig looks back at the chicken and says, “Good idea, what do you want to call it?” The chicken thinks about it and says, “Why don’t we call it ‘Ham and Eggs’?” “I don’t think so,” says the pig, “I’d be committed, but you’d only be involved.”

After discussions, we seem to be heading towards adopting a formal project management tool for our JISCRI bid – which now has a name: SM@LL – more on that later!

Since the intention is that these small projects will be short term and agile but involve multidisciplinary teams (that’s that JISC wanted, that’s what JISC’s getting), the most appropriate tool seems to be SCRUM – but are there any better suggestions?

To my way of thinking, SCRUM loses its purpose if you invest too much time or money in it, so no Gareth, you won’t be going on a training course! ;-)

JISC resources for JISCRI bidders

From Andy McGregor’s post: