Do or Die: Managing Ad Hoc Projects

In all three cases, saying “no” was not an option.

“We know that ad hoc projects are always going to happen,” Fleischman says, “so we build in time [to annual budgets and planning] that we can allocate—a fudge factor to anticipate the unanticipated.”

Sometimes that works.

To deal with the customer-satisfaction survey, Fleischman knew that his staff already was skilled in the use of survey-creation software. It was just a matter of allocating staff time, designing the survey, getting it on the Web and tabulating results.

For the consortium request, Fleischman quickly assembled his tech staff, set up a special server, made arrangements to take the video feed, put it in the computer, encoded it and streamed it over the network. It was important to accommodate the consortium, he says, because the group is building a gigabit Ethernet network that connects 10 of the 16 Sacramento County districts—an important tool in the department’s ongoing distance learning initiatives.

Sometimes the fudge factor doesn’t work quite as well.

When he came to the online personnel application, Fleischman knew that it might take considerable planning and possibly months of programming. Since he didn’t have the budget, staff availability or in-house expertise to develop such an application, Fleischman decided to create a new position for some upcoming projects, with a portion of that programmer’s time allocated to building the online application.

Though the personnel director wasn’t thrilled with his solution, Fleischman points out that “part of my job is a little like politics, so it’s important to show people you’re moving in the right direction.”

Making Do With Less

Most IT professionals in education are buffeted by pressures from every direction to do more with less—and to do it more quickly. That often involves ad hoc, or unanticipated, projects initiated by political governing boards, federal and state government entities, district administrators, teachers, parents and the public.

“Whether curriculum-based or systems-based, an ad hoc project is something the IT administrator didn’t plan for,” says Bernadette McGinnis, director of Local Education Agency projects, California School Information Services program (CSIS) in Sacramento. “The first problem is that it’s unexpected; the second is that the IT person doesn’t have right of refusal.”

McGinnis points out that resolving technological issues in ad hoc projects “isn’t always easy, but that really isn’t the toughest part. It’s the soft skills that get muddied most.” These soft skills include the project manager’s diplomacy and ability to deal with both internal and external politics, as well as the need to include in the planning phases all the people who will be affected.

Created by legislative mandate in 1997, CSIS primarily builds systems to enable the state education department and more than 8,000 K-12 public school systems in California to share information.

Robin Canale, CEO of New Millennium Consulting in Roseville, Calif., works as the program project manager with CSIS, and suggests that if IT managers employ some project management discipline, they may well take the sting out of ad hoc initiatives. (See “Rules for Ad Hoc Projects ” below.)

“For ad hoc projects, there is absolutely no discipline,” says Canale. “I can’t tell you how many times people have come to me and said, ‘This is what has to be done, this is when it is due and this is how you will do it.’ ”

Demands such as that take away the cornerstone of good project management: understanding why the project is needed, then planning and setting measurable goals.

“The biggest struggle is with small IT departments that don’t have the funds and people to do all the work that’s required of them,” Canale says. “The challenge comes in on the soft-skill side. [IT staffers] have to influence people who are driving the initiative and make them understand what’s actually involved.”