Library Services Platform as a foundation for project management proficiency

fuEarlier today, I submitted an Ex Libris Users of North America (ELUNA) presentation proposal on the subject of project management. I hope to follow an excellent ELUNA 2018 presentation on project management approaches by SUNY's Jan Waterhouse. 

Earlier this fall, I published a post on the Library Services Platform (LSP) in this space. I'm building on these ideas with this take:

• LSPs are central to academic library service delivery
• The implementation or migration project, moving from an Integrated Library System (ILS) to an LSP is an important opportunity for a library or consortium to improve project management proficiency
  • Which is essential, given the opportunities offered by the LSP [or, platform]

In my experience in multiple venues (consortium, user group, single institutions), this line of thinking isn't fully understood because the first point is not understood. If the LSP is simply a slightly-updated ILS software package (the most frequent perception), then the idea of using the toolset to radically enhance user services for electronic, print, and digital content isn't compelling. Additionally, the core value of tightly linking resource management with knowledge bases is often discounted. In this view, the LSP simply fits into a highly fragmented environment just as the ILS, link resolver, knowledge base, and other tools supported library operations 10-15 years ago. 

This is where strategic vision and mature project management skills support tool exploitation. For the latter, the implementation (supported directly by a vendor) and follow-up projects can lay the groundwork for the ongoing enhancement of user services with the LSP as the foundation.