Mapping digital project types in the arts and culture sector

For some reason, the phrase 'digital transformation' has reared its head a few times recently. I sort of hoped it had gone away.

It's possibly because we're going through one of those occasional periods of digital instability (particularly around social platforms and the potential effects of AI/LLMs). When that happen, people are forced to change up their digital practices, so transformation becomes a talking point.

I say that I hoped it had gone away because it's yet another of those broad terms that aren't suited to having particularly useful conversations. People are likely to come to that phrase with different meanings.

The most recent instance came a few weeks ago. I was on a panel at the Tessitura Conference in London, and we were talking about how digital projects are delivered.

I said something about how it'd taken me a while to break through the buzzword fog and wrap my head around what digital transformation actually is. Then one day it dawned on me that people, for whatever reason, were just calling fairly run-of-the-mill projects 'transformations'

But from my experience, there were all sorts of digital projects out there. And that got me thinking that you could describe them in different ways. For instance:

broad or narrow in scope
reactive or proactive

…and that maybe that was a useful way to start thinking about these things.

In this post, I want to focus on project scope.

Because not all digital projects are created equal. You can plot them on a broad spectrum of complexity, risk, and organisational impact. And while all of this isn't unique to the arts and culture sector, that's where I spend most of time, so that's the lens I'm applying to this.

So this is my go at a simple framework. It might also be a way to help distinguish between projects that can and should be delivered smoothly and routinely, and those that ask more of an organisation and carry far greater implications if they go wrong.

Levels of digital project scope

← The Everyday End

These are your classic, self-contained projects. Adding some website functionality. Creating articles, video trailers and social media posts. The list goes on. It's necessary stuff. These tend to:

Follow well-established processes
Be lower in risk
Have clear boundaries and expected outcomes
Make up the majority of digital projects by volume

In most well-run organisations, there’s a steady drumbeat of this kind of work. When it goes well, no one really notices, which is a sign of success. It’s all about reliability and delivery.

Stretch

These sit somewhere in between. Maybe it’s a big ticketing system upgrade, a revamped website, a new audience segmentation approach, or a relatively contained digitisation project.

These projects often:

Need to be delivered on top of everyday work.
Involve a degree of change management.
Deliver something new with tangible efficiency or effectiveness gains.

They’re still mostly operational, but they start to stretch an organisation’s ways of working. They need more alignment, more communication, and usually a bit more patience.

They might not be complicated, but they might still be hard.

It’s also worth mentioning that doing several of these kinds of projects at once can be more complex than delivering them individually. The cumulative effect of all that change can increase risk and create a new set of challenges.

The Transformational End →

This is the ambitious stuff.

These projects can reshape a part of what a cultural organisation does, what it's known for, and perhaps even how it sustains itself. Things like major new web platforms, large-scale collection digitisation efforts, and prominent in-venue installations.

These are most likely to be:

Proactive, rather than reactive.
Significant in scale and ambition.
Culturally and operationally demanding.
Dependent on serious leadership buy-in and internal (and external) coordination.

They tend to be fewer in number, but their consequences are far greater. For better or worse.

The Consequence Curve

I've tried turning this into a diagram. I'm not wedded to the name, in case you were wondering.

As you move from left to right, so the complexity and consequences ramp up.

At the same time, the volume of these projects decreases. That gives us a scenario where there are likely to be fewer people around with experience of doing this sort of thing successfully.

I'm aware that it's not a perfect representation:

In smaller organisations, even low-risk projects can feel high-stakes, especially if digital maturity is limited.
Multiple 'departmental' projects going on at once can quickly stack up in terms of complexity.
'Transformation' isn't always a project and it sometimes happens by accident. An organisation puts one foot in front of another and, thanks to a fluke of circumstance or some particularly excellent execution of day-to-day activities, ends up having done something significant.
When something ‘simple’ fails (no matter the size of the organisation), it can be put down to inexperience or lack of internal capability. Which makes higher-ups understandably cautious about taking on bigger things.

I'm sure you can come up with your own exceptions too, but I think it's workable enough.

Building digital confidence

Confidence matters the broader the scope of the project. Not just confidence in the tech, but in an organisation's ability to plan, deliver, and learn.

That confidence also needs to be projected and felt internally and (if you want funders, partners and audiences to come along for the ride) externally.

A few thoughts:

It's important to nail the basics. If an organisation isn't confident in handling the everyday to a high standard, it’s probably not the right time to take on something transformative.
Treat reliable delivery as a success metric. There’s real value in being known as a safe pair of hands.
Capture and share learning. Even with small projects, make the effort to reflect and document. It builds institutional memory. Be part of a wider community where this sort of thing is discussed.
Don’t conflate ambition with readiness. The seed of a great idea still needs fertile ground. Meaning solid execution, clear support, and capacity to change.

What makes transformational projects possible?

This is probably a topic for another day, and I'm sure others have written more on this sort of thing.

But for now, I'd say that organisations ready to move towards the transformational end, a few conditions need to be present:

Digitally savvy leadership at senior or board level.
Cross-departmental collaboration and trust.
Longer-term thinking around impact and investment.
A track record of delivery on smaller projects.

These are some of the building blocks and what comes to mind when I think of larger-scale projects that have been pulled off successfully within the sector.

Without them, bigger digital efforts can become costly distractions rather than meaningful shifts. I've seen my share of those too.

Summing up

I don't really have a conclusion or a specific point I'm making here. This is really part of my ongoing attempt at nailing down some of the more amorphous terms that plague discussion around the topics I'm interested in.

I hope it's useful. Let me know if you spot how it could be improved.

After writing this, I remembered Trish Thomas (Head of Digital Innovation at the London Museum)'s article, How to get your GLAM organisation to invest in digital.

Trish used the Forrester Model of Digital Maturity to evaluate the London Museum's digital capabilities, identifying them as 'Adopters'. That is, approaching digital on a project-by-project basis without integrating it into the core business strategy. That probably tallies with the 'everyday/stretch' digital project scope I've set out.

There's lots more in there, though. Including the consequences of underinvestment and the fact that existing problems might be technical and/or workflow-related (requiring changes to job titles, personal goals, and so on). It's well worth a read.