technology plan | David Lee King

confused dude Just a follow-up thought to my post on strategic and technology planning. I’m sure y’all know this, but guess what? The technology planning and implementation is the easy part.

The hard part is the people.

Here’s an example of what I mean: Last year, my library’s biggest technology project was our RFID/Self Check project. It included tagging every item in the collection with an RFID tag and installing eleven self check kiosks throughout the building.

The technologyÂ part was easy – we worked with our vendors to make sure the kiosks worked, the new RFID gates went up, and the RFID tagging stations worked.

The hard part was “everything else,” which included:

planning a bunch of RFID tagging teams and schedules (we closed for a week and staff did the tagging)
rethinking customer flow in our circulation lobby and around the building
teaching our customers the “new way to check out”
Working through a new process for our technical services and circulation departments

And I’m sure I’m forgetting something. Has the technology been flawless? No – it’s technology. Something WILL go wrong.

But the “people” part – that affects everyone. You want to make sure the technology parts are done right. But also make certain to get the most important parts of your project right, too. The people parts.

Image by Jonny Wikins

Last week at the Future Tech Strategies for Libraries symposium, Rebecca Jones (of Dysart & Jones Associates) spoke about digital strategy. She always has good things to say, so I always listen closely.

She said this (my summary of it): Technology drives what the organization does. So, should the organization’s strategic plan come first, or should the technology plan come first? It’s starting to shift to the technology plan.

On the one hand, if you have a good strategic plan that is including technology … meaning that your tech manager is with it and has helped develop those strategies … then following a good organizational strategy makes sense. That’s how I’ve always operated. There’s no need for a real technology plan, because it’s embedded in the plans of the library.

On the other hand, today’s technology is driving the organization in many ways. Even something as “traditional” as new computer purchases, updating an OS, or replacing a telephone system (doing that this year!) can have a big impact on the organization’s budget, on planning, on training, and on organizational capacity for the year.

Then, when your “new phone system” is moving from an out-of-date system to a VOIP system with unified messaging, hand-off capabilities to a mobile device, internal chat messaging, etc … that can have a HUGE positive impact in how the organization does its work, and can … yes … have a big impact on the library’s strategic plans.

So – what do you think? Chicken or the egg? Strategic plan first, or technology plan first? Please share!

Pic by Kyle Van Horn