YOUR PROJECT PLAN

FORMULATING THE PROJECT'S GUIDING QUESTIONS

A. Formulate the project's guiding questions:

What are your goals?

What matters most in your project plan are your actual goals in doing the research: The reason that you are doing the research; What it is that you hope your work will potentially do? Where you start is anchored in your goals.

What is the scope of your intended audience: Digital Humanities scholars and researchers worldwide? Other scholars in your specific field? Post-doctoral Fellows? Graduate or Undergraduate students? How will your project reach your audience?

What constitutes your project's conceptual framework? (The literature/field in which you are working).

What are your research questions? (Develop a set of clear statements of exactly what you are studying and researching).

What are your methods? (How you will answer your research question(s): finding pertinent archives/sources with which you will work, as well as the way you will sample/explore them, and the actual techniques you will use to analyze and interpret them).

Feasibility :

--What will you need to complete your project? If there are comparable projects available? If so contact such projects' teams to determine what they needed.

--Are there skills, periods of time, funding sources, or collaborators you should plan for or secure ahead of time?

--Does the technique or platform you've chosen satisfy your goals ? Will they give you rigorous results for the question(s) you're framing, or do they offer the features that you are propounding?

What are the validity concerns and threats? ( How might you be wrong: where/how you will work through inherent limitations and biases in your methods, sources, perspective, etc.)

See:

Defining a Project's Scope (Emory University)

Trevor Owens' Blog post, "Where to Start? On Research Questions in The Digital Humanities" (August 26, 2013),

B. DEVELOPING A DATA MANAGEMENT AND SUSTAINABILTY PLAN

Not all digital projects are planned to last for as long as traditional paper-based codices might last on a library shelf. Digital projects might end for a variety of reasons, from an intentional design to last for the length of an individual scholar’s career, to a sudden loss of funding resulting in an inability to support the project any further, while some may attempt to continue indefinitely into the future.

What do you want out of your project? If it's for a portfolio or CV, could you document your project in video, pictures, and other more easily maintained media rather than hosting it indefinitely? If it's for permanent public use, could you imagine the project starting from its most portable elements (a simple data file, for example) so you have something to distribute if other elements stop working?

Sustainability considerations: When digital humanities projects are envisioned as permanent web projects, indefinitely available, this requires the ongoing cost of web hosting, maintenance of changing or outdated code or features, and sometimes even complete rebuilding if a technology becomes obsolete or a tool is discontinued. All of these various options are best pursued as intentional sustainability plans designed with forethought.

Resources:

The Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap, The Visual Media Workshop, University of Pittsburgh, June 2022. "The Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap (the “Roadmap” or the STSR) is a module-based workshop intended to help you and your team approach the seemingly daunting task of sustaining your digital humanities project over time."

“Managing and Sustaining the Project Assets” by Jennifer Serventi, National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), November 4 2019.

C. DEVELOPING YOUR BUDGET PLAN

Based on your project's scope, the development of a budget plan includes several considerations:

What are your immediate funding needs?
What might be your recurring costs and your long-term funding needs?
To whom will you be submitting your funding? an external funder or an internal funder? Though both are equally important, their requirements may be quite different.

See this guide’s Section "Budget and Funding Opportunities" for information and strategies that can help you succeed in this part of your project's design.

D. IDENTIFYING COLLABORATIVE OPPORTUNITIES

DH projects often involve collaboration among researchers from different disciplines, institutions, and locations. However, collaboration can also pose many challenges, such as communication, coordination, data management, and evaluation. See this guide’s Section “Identifying Collaborative Opportunities“ for information and strategies that can help you succeed in your collaborative DH projects.

E. IMPLEMENTATION

At the very start of a DH Project you will need to create a work plan that details the progress of the project from start to finish. Creating and distributing this plan will ensure that all team members and stakeholders are on the same page regarding the project’s schedule and deliverables.

Elements of a work plan:

A list of itemized tasks, as detailed and specific as possible.
A list of individual responsibilities for each team member
A time element, including length of time per task and a reasonable deadline.
An account of how tasks depend upon one another for completion.
A deliverables/outcome element.

See this guide's Section, "Implementation," for information and strategies that can help you and your team during your project's development.

F. EVALUATION AND LESSONS LEARNED

In general a DH project evaluation occurs at the conclusion of a project. However, it is most helpful to undertake ongoing evaluations (ranging from frequent weekly or monthly check-ins to a final written report) during the project’s execution as well.

See this guide’s Section "Evaluation and Lessons Learned'" for information and strategies that can help you and your team during your project's evolution.