I once worked for a small law firm. We filed all electronic documents using folders and file naming protocols. Our issue was: they were only saved and accessed through Windows Explorer. Searching was difficult, and if a file was misnamed, misfiled, it was lost for good. Our goal was to find a proper litigation file management product that included a financial management aspect to the program that would output customized reports for our main stakeholders: our clients. Within the firm, our main stakeholders were all staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Was our mismanaged adventure successful? Yes, and no. We were capable and successful in migrating our files. The program advertised the ability to recognize duplication, but we found there was a caveat, in that it had to be an exact duplicate, with the same metadata. We were looking for how to find duplication within file contents. As well, the financial customization that was promised was not delivered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our instructions were to research the top 3 software options that were selected by our principal lawyer and meet with the distributor and select one based on the principal lawyers demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were a small firm with less than a handful of staff to complete this. We chose a program that was not used often in Canada because of the promises of the finance forms customization. This ended up requiring a lot more extra work on the part of our finance staff, and I, a semi-savvy sql nerd. It did not produce the form customization that we had believed that we would get in the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What we should have done: We required much more expertise in determining our actual needs. We should have hired a Project Manager and a knowledgeable consultant to do the research, based on an environment and digital scan (Watt, 2014;<\/em> University of Calgary, Learning Technologies Task Force, 2014) of our data along with our contracted IT professionals. A Project Manager would have been able to determine the terms of this project and the management of it. A consultant with the required expertise to find the software that would do exactly what we needed. A Project Manager could have determined the difference between needs and wants, the need of the software, and the need as a law firm.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Down the rabbit hole we go! Once we selected a software program, the distributor\/sales person set us up with installation plans and basic training. That was our only training plan. It was decided that I would be the Administrator. I took all of the training offered. The front-end of the program was managed through security levels. Certain employees would get certain training based on the security level that they were assigned. This created issues when staff began working within the program as they were asked to access files that their security level did not allow, creating issues for me, as the Administrator, as I would either have to change their access, or access the files for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What we should have done: Have the Project Manager create a more succinct, permanent plan to follow-up training to support staff (University of Calgary, Learning Technologies Task Force, 2014, p. 3). Clearly determine security levels for staff based on more than their prescribed job descriptions, security levels should have been based in reality, rather than assumed roles (an aside, so should have job descriptions).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In short, there were many things that we could, and should, have done differently. The software program remained in place and band-aid solutions were put in place for the areas that did not work to our expectations. Having a Project Manager and consultant whose only jobs were to focus on the implementation of this software program would have given us ample time to do our prescribed jobs to our expected standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n University of Calgary, Learning Technologies Task Force. (2014). Strategic framework for Learning Technologies<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Watt, A. (2014). Project Management<\/em> (2nd ed.). BCCAMPUS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I once worked for a small law firm. We filed all electronic documents using folders and file naming protocols. Our issue was: they were only saved and accessed through Windows Explorer. Searching was difficult, and if a file was misnamed, misfiled, it was lost for good. Our goal was to find a proper litigation file … Continue reading “A short story on Project Management needs”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":324,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru305\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru305\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru305\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru305\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/324"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru305\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru305\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru305\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru305\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru305\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru305\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}