Sprinting toward Faculty Engagement: Adopting Project Management Approaches to Build Library–Faculty Relationships

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Research sprints: A new model of support

“…Recognizing parallels in the working relationships between librarians and faculty, Kansas found inspiration in the software development industry's solution to its crisis: the team-dynamics theory and project management practice of Scrum. 5 By bringing together all relevant sectors of an organization to work in close proximity for an uninterrupted period of work time, teams using Scrum are thought to be able to collaboratively carry-as in a rugby scrum-a project to a more refined and efficient completion. 6[6] Key concepts from Scrum had been imported into academic work processes as early as 2010 with the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded One Week | One Tool program at George Mason University's Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, though the focus there was still on software development as most of its activities worked toward producing small web applications.…”

“…6[6] Key concepts from Scrum had been imported into academic work processes as early as 2010 with the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded One Week | One Tool program at George Mason University's Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, though the focus there was still on software development as most of its activities worked toward producing small web applications. 7 But by importing Scrum principles into librarian-faculty collaborations, Kansas sought to restructure the process of librarian-faculty engagement and move it from intermittent involvement at the beginning (e.g., literature review) and end (e.g., collecting) of the research process and toward direct support throughout all phases of the research lifecycle-if only in the microcosm of a sprint. The hope of this shift, write members of the founding Research Sprints team Pamella Lach and Brian Rosenblum, was not only "a new type of user engagement based on meaningful, mutually beneficial, and equitable scholarly partnerships," but also to "demonstrate the value of [Kansas] Libraries."…”