Presentation by dattatraya pathak

Project Management – the Mantra for Sustainable Growth—Mantra for Leveraging Emerging Trends

Essence of social media is to know your audience and engaging them in what they love!!!!

Mantra for leveraging Emerging Trends

DATTATRAYA PATHAK

Principal Program Management Consultant

ASPECT MANAGEMENT SERVICES PVT LTD


Title of the Paper : Using Social Networks in Project Management

Theme : Project Management – The Mantra for Sustainable Growth

—Mantra for Leveraging Emerging Trends

Keywords : ‘Social Networking’, ‘Virtual Teams’, ‘Collaboration’,

‘Engagement’, ‘Collective Intelligence’

Abstract: 1

Explosion of social media is changing the way we communicate. While managing projects, this

change is impacting communication and team management processes. With ubiquitous availability of

smart-phones, iPads, tablets and so on, information distribution can be outreached to virtual extended

teams comprising of vendors/suppliers, customers, contractors, etc.

With the advent of social networks and its wider outreach, the project managers have now have a

powerful tool in their hands, which can be used for the collaboration of geographically dispersed

teams contributing to project objectives.Practitioners and researchers can build-on enterprise social

networks (ESN) to realize more business value by using social media.

This paper will cover the following aspects related to the use of social networking to project

management activities:

1. Using social networking as a competitive advantage through

a. increase in business value

b. better engagement with different stakeholders

c. knowledge sharing among the teams to achieve project objectives

d. efficient on-the-fly communications among teams to project’s advantage

2. Using social networking for project management areas like

a. Scope definition

b. Project communications

c. Project collaboration

1 As submitted to PMI India


Extended PMIS

Improved

Collaboration Reduce

d issue levels

Collective

IntelligenceIncrease

in business value

Better engagement

Reduced risk levels


d. Project procurements

e. Knowledge base for a project and performing organization

3. Implementing social networks for project management collaboration/ communications

processes

4. Critical success factors

5. Challenges in ensuring Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA) requirements of data.

6. Future trends



TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 Introduction..............................................................................................................4

2 Social Networking as Competitive Advantage....................................................5

3 Using Social Networks for Managing Projects...................................................6

4 Implementing Social Networks in Projects..........................................................8

5 Future Trends.........................................................................................................14

6 References..............................................................................................................14



1 Introduction

Explosion of social media is changing the way we communicate. While managing projects, this

change is impacting processes related to communication and team management. With ubiquitous

availability of smart-phones, iPads, tablets and other such devices, information distribution can now

be outreached to extended global teams comprising of dispersed teams, vendors/suppliers,

customers, contractors, public, and communities and so on.

Social networks have brought a radical change in the way people are communicating, which has

resulted in enhanced information discovery and delivery. Communication using social networks is

becoming more direct, natural and informal. Though social networks are supported by both many

technologies and a variety of applications, still it is a major cultural change in the interpersonal and

group communications. People will now use these channels for getting on-the-fly information related

to individuals, organizations, projects and so on.

With the advent of social networks and its wider outreach, the project managers have now have a

powerful tool in their hands, which can be used for the collaboration of geographically dispersed

teams to contribute to project objectives.

This paper will cover the following aspects related to the use of social networking to project

management activities:

Social Networking as Competitive Advantage

Using Social Networks for Managing Projects

Implementing Social Networks

Challenges of Information Security

Future Trends



2 Social Networkingas Competitive Advantage

A research from Gartner suggests that social media will overtake e-mail as the primary method of

communications in the workplace by 2014. So project managers have to ready to use this channel for

their project communications effectively. Also, the Study by McKinsey Global Instituteifound that

companies using social technologies realized measurable benefits such as:

25% less time spent on emails

35% less time searching for information

20-25% improvement in knowledge worker productivity.

Use of social networks for communications in projects is a major paradigm shift. It provides a very

powerful tool to communicate among the project stakeholders by reducing the gap between face to

face communications and remote meetings. This is possible mainly because of the following inherent

characteristicsof social networking:

Awareness:Goes beyond mere physical proximity by using tools as chat, blog, and

streaming, video conferencing and so on. It is a big connectamong the project related

community.

Relations: Connects individuals in effective way and builds direct and close relations

resulting direct communications and reduced communication bottlenecks.

Emotions: Based on friendly relations. How emotional factors will drive and creation and

expansion of contents which is likely to be of better quality.

Interactions : Communicationshighly interactive, breaking the time limits of working hours

and expediting information flow among the team members

Trust: Social Networks is driven by trust among the members for free flow of suggestions,

criticism and recommendationsimproving quality of the contents. Project team members need

to be trained on what content need to be put on the social networks and what would be its

impact on the overall project performance – positive or negative.

Information stream: Social networks can serve as a natural stream of information flows

emphasizing development of new ideas and concepts. History of such flows posted on a

project wall could be of historical significance and lead to benefit to the current projects and

future projects as learning.



Mush up: No pre-arrangement of contents providing opportunities for creativity.Project can

characterize in activities such as to conduct project design, identify project risks, etc.

Use of social networks brings the following 3 major competitive advantages to projects:

Increase in business value i.e. by finishing the projects in lesser duration and start realizing

the business benefits early.

Innovations, suggestions and knowledge flowing from the grass root level to any level

Reduced communication time among the project stakeholders which increases overall project

performance.

3 Using Social Networks for Managing Projects

With nuances of social networks, project Managers need to assume a role of a community manager

and guide his team and stakeholders on how social networks can be used in project delivery. Social

networking can be employedin variety of project activities for knowledge sharing, information

distribution, team collaboration, external communications, and customer engagement and so on.

Using social networking as a competitive advantage through

Increase in business value by using open platform for team collaboration.

Reduces costs of communications by efficient on-the-fly communications among teams to

project’s advantage.

Reduced time on resolving burning issues or mitigating risks by getting inputs from the

stakeholders instantly.

Better engagement and transparency among stakeholders through open and instant

communications.

Better team collaboration to produce qualitative project deliverables through brainstorming.

Better communications by sharing scanned images, photographs, etc.

Define a separate Twitter name for your project for branding purpose. Let world know about

the project!!


Extended PMIS

Improved

Collaboration Reduce

d issue levels

Collective

IntelligenceIncrease

in business value

Better engagement

Reduced risk levels


Table 3.1: shows how Social Networks can be used in various areas of Project Management.

Table 3.1: Using Social Networks in Project Management

Attributes of

Social NetworkingProject Areas Examples

Stakeholders’

Engagement

Customer

Management

How do you manage request from customer on a

particular issue? Brainstorming can be done by a

predefined team to address the issue.

Getting clarification from customer on requirements,

contract’s terms and conditions

On the fly sharing of various documents, multimedia

files, etc. facilitating

Stakeholders’

Engagement

Stakeholder

Management

Understanding information flow trends in the team

Public announcements with specific pre-defined

hashtags like overall progress, likely date of completion

of the project, reasons for delays, major cost

escalations, milestone achievements and so on.

Receiving and analyzing feedback to understand

overall sentiments.

Internal announcements about project’s status, new

innovations, learnings and failures, etc.

Knowledge Sharing

Team

communications

and

collaboration

The questions asked and discussed were available to

all the people who joined the discussions later.

Using labels and categories to expedite search for

relevant information

Knowledge Sharing

Extended Team

Collaboration

Collaboration and linkages to other communities could

provide quick and suitable support/advice to the project

team.

Support from R & D Division, competency centers, etc.

Leveraging on the expertise of external teams,

organizations, associations, etc.

Team collaboration Project Delivery

Deliverables produced via online collaboration:

Plans, Registers, Trackers

Analysis, Design Documents

Other project artifact reviews

How we can improve on quality of deliverables?

Extended reviews can be planned to get feedback on

key deliverables just before they are released.

Team Collaboration Risks and Involving stakeholders for risk identification and



Attributes of

Social NetworkingProject Areas Examples

Issues

analysis, mitigation actions, etc.

Publishing common issues and informing team

members on how to tackle such issues.

Team CollaborationQuality

Management

Involvement in creating and revising procedures

processes, checklists, procedures, guidelines, etc.

Getting on the field feedback on the quality artifacts.

Information

distribution

Project

Communications

Publishing details events, meetings, workshops etc.

Project eventslike milestone achieved, leaning from

failures, sharing success stories, etc.

Social Events like project party agenda, on-line meets,

etc. to get remote teams connected

External information which are of some interest to

project team members.

4 Implementing Social Networksin Projects

No doubt, communications is the most critical part in project management. It is all-pervasive and

ongoing in the project life cycle. Social networking as now to be the integral part of an organization’s

IT strategy to improve internal collaboration. It is a new and very different communications

environment and project manager needs to plan for using social networking tools in his project.

Miscommunications are often caused due to haste in sending messages. It further cascades into a

series of mails/messages creating more and more confusion. Social media tools are also fast way to

communicate, so there are risks in using them for project communications.Social media can be

effectively used in project in firefighting issues by making quick and interactive communications for

early resolution.

To use them successfully, implementing social networks requires:

Training to the team members and the stakeholders for using tools and techniques and

applications to post their view to appropriate groups.



Understanding and using tools and techniques and various applications to perform analytics

on the available data to get various patterns

Rules for privacy and confidentiality to control the project communications.

Content definition and its management stipulating areas for communications on the social

networks.

If you are not using social media in your project, it is quite possible that project team members are

exchanging information using personal social networking. This could harm the project interests and

uncontrolled information will flow within and outside the project team.

Project team members and stakeholdersshould understand sensitivity of the information and its

impact on the project. Emphasis is to be given on the demerits to minimize damage due to

miscommunications.Without this awareness, team members will be sharing too much information

which could be detrimental to the project.

Project manager can think of using social networks for the project use depending on the preferences

of the team members to use a particular network(s). The posting can be embedded or linked with

other sites and published over there to the target groups.

4.1 Using Twitter in Project Management

People are using social networks for quick communications and mostly it is unstructured and informal.

Search engines will use these tags, lists, keywords, security setting and applications find required

information patterns, overall activities. To control this information, the social networking sites are

providing tools and applications. However, project manager should define policies, processes and

procedures. New role and responsibilities also need to be defined to take care of posting, reviews,

publishing the content.

As an illustration, how Twitter can be used in project management is shown in Table 4-1.

Table 4-1: Using Twitter in Project Management

Facilities Purpose Typical Usages

Tweet/Retweet/

Direct Messages/

Sending/forwarding messages Sending alerts to the project team for

document readiness, approval and

completion

Sharing the successful completion of a

key project milestone(s)

Sharing audio or video conference

details

Sharing the completion of key project

tasks / milestones

Alerting the project team a new issue

has occurred and what measures need

to be taken to control such issues




Advising the project team that a key risk

is no longer current and needs no

immediate actions or otherwise.

Buffer Apps

Schedules of publishing of the

information periodically or as

required.

Posting can be planned in advance and

posted.

Lists

Allows you to listen to

conversations, identify

influencers and filter out noise so

that you can focus on the topics

which you are interested in.

Pre-defined lists can be used to conduct

communications on specific topic(s) among

different groups created for different

purposes.

Hashtags,

Keywords,

Used by search engines to make

query and analyze.

All related people know what the purpose of

such tags is and how they can be used to

communicate and to make searches. #hash

tags also help in finding trends in the

communications by the stakeholders.

Privacy Setting

Privacy setting can be set to

control addition or removal of

members from the social

network including lists.

Social networking accounts can be set as

“Private” to control the information within a

defined group, protecting the confidentiality,

access and availability of the information.

TwitAdder/

Tweepi /

TwitterReach

To know who to follow and who

you want to follow

This facility could be very useful in a

government projects where public, social

communities, unions and other interest

groups are actively involved and influencing

the project outcomes.

Social mention

Search engine for analyzing

social media conversions to

analyze metrics such as

Number of visitors,

followers, friends, fans,

members, etc.

Amount of time spent on the

social networks

Level of activity on the

social networks.

To analyze and understand what

stakeholders are talking about the project?

Twitpic: /

Yfrog /

YouTube videos /

Upload photos and easily share

them on Twitter.

Get status of project using

photos/videos/audios for remote locations




AudioBoo

Tweetdeck or

HootSuite

To listen conversion about you,

you project, your organization, Get feedback your feedback and take

appropriate actions.

Tinytorchfind relevant social content about

your industry

To compare in the industry vis-à-vis in the

project.

Embedding Twit

Leverage twitter in other social

networks like Facebook LinkedIn

by embedding the tweet

Very useful as posting can be done on one

social network and can be posted on

another social networks such as Facebook,

Google+ etc.

Like Twitter, Facebook can be used in project management is shown in Table 4-2


Open Group

Create an open group to trigger

discussions and get feedback from

anyone on posted topic related to

the project.

Project team can seek the opinion on the

posted topics

Some project-related artifacts can be

displayed and feedback is sought.

Closed Group

Create a closed group and anyone

can see who are the members but

cannot see what is posted.

To know who are the member of the

various committees

Who are the team members of a

projects?

Secret GroupCreate a secret exclusively for its

members

Reviews of project documents

Brainstorming on various topics

Posts/

messages

Posting a message on the wall, in

the open, closed or secret book

Similar to the use of

Tweet/Retweet/Direct Messages/

Chat

For instant messaging and very

easy and direct way of

communicating with some.

On the fly queries can be made on

burning or urgent issues

Quick feedback on some topic, issues or

risks.

Pages

Project specific pages can be

created to publish to share

information and get feedback from

the target audience on project-

related topics.

Share project milestones achieved

Share changed schedule dates

Share budgeted costs and actual cost of

the public and infra project.

Interests Project specific pages can be

created to discuss common interest

Create common interest groups for

specific topic.




topics.

Events Creating events and informing to

the relevant people

Invitation for project related events

External events like training can be

shared with members for nominations.

Birthday party of a team member.

Ads Adds can be created on Facebook

by using information like page post

engagement, page likes, clicks to

websites, conversions, event

responses, etc.

To understand overall trend and what

Facebook users are talking about the

project and analyze the data to align with

project objectives.

To publish project achievements.

Project manager can consider other social networks (Google+, LinkedIn, etc.) for publishing project

related information and also to provide a platform for communications. One of such networks could be

primary and he may selectively or grossly synchronize other sites bye linking or embedding the

contents.

Recently, in General Elections, 2014, Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) used social toolsiito build a team of

volunteers to

Take up individual tasks based on time available

Express your views to selected groups by joining the group and actively participating and

expanding the group by tagging volunteers’ friends for discussions.

Participation in open forum on critical current issue(s)

Share on social media using Twitter, Facebook or other social networks in suggested post

and share it on volunteers’ pages.

Add media worthy watch on the web and spread through.

Earn points and badges to climb up ladder of the active volunteers and selected volunteer get

chance to meet top leaders!!!

4.2 Advantages of Social Networks

Harnessing the power of social media technologies is one way to do this.

Support team-based collaborationiii through quick and direct communications to get updates

on the project progress status in various forms on 24X7 basis.

Enables collective intelligenceiv

Strengthening social connections

Facilitating knowledge management

Fostering situation awareness

Enhancing business value

A variety of groups with spatial characteristics and interests can be created for theme

discussions.



4.3 Disadvantages of Social Networks

Due to its openness and informal nature, social networks has to be used with caution. Some of the

disadvantages are:

Set up very high expectations for quick, direct, informal and concise communications.Sending

a message a few minutes late could be very late!!!!

Responses are mostly quick, but very informal and not very precise. Project has to have

process to review the responses and then take formal action on information shared on the

networks.

Risk of too much of uncontrolled communications form any level.

Opens up the possibility for hackers to commit fraud and launch spam and virus attacks

There is a danger of criminal prosecution in case of abusive language used while

communicating to the external stakeholders.

Limited to those who have access to the internet and mobile networks. Other channels need

to considered to reach the target audience which not covered by social networks

4.4 Critical success factors

Organizations that should embrace the social media rather than blocking their employees

using them, will find themselves at competitive advantage.

Organization that will engage customer for trust building, effective use of push mechanism for

communications.

Identifying the right kind of project activities that can be accomplished using social networks.

4.5 Challenges of Information Security

Everyone must understand that the information shared to a friend or a group is not limited to whom

you are sharing to. The information can be in turn cascaded to the world like a virus by your friends.

Fundamentally, social networks are not designed to keep the information private. This is a curse or

boon. Depends on what you want to achieve and what you don’t want to!!

In the haste for open and outreached communications, project manager should ensure that the

sensitive information is not shared on the social sites. Social networking sites have become a

potential target for attackers due to the availability of sensitive information, as well as its large user

base. vSocial networks for project are likely to be behind firewall for security. There are some

instances that some social networking sites have shared data to advertisers. In such situation, project

managers should perform information analysis and categorize with the consent of the key

stakeholders about what information can be put in the internet, intranet and extranet.



5 Future Trends

Going forward, project management software will include media suites as a common features. This

additional functionality will facilitate the management of various data streams centrally.New tools will

be launched by different service providers for enriching user experience and all such tools will have

common interface to integrate with various social platform.One of the predictions for the

changing social media technology market is that biometric scanning will be incorporated into the next

generation of tools (Phillips, 2008, p. 83)vi. Major advantage of using biometric traits for identification

will to resolve identification crisis and reduction in the fake user accounts.

Using social networking is not just implementing of social tools in the organization as an IT initiative,

but it is a business need to understand them and implement them for achieving business objectives.

Project managers will have to embrace these new channels of communications and plan for its usage

to reap the benefits due to quick, direct and open communications.

Social networks are going to stay, and organizations will increasingly use them in project

management, sales and marketing, brand building and many more areas.

6 References


i[] http://www.clearvale.com/clearvale/mkt-av/en/whitepapers/7StepsSocialBusinessSuccess_Whitepaper.pdf

ii[] “Shaili Chopra”, The Big Connect- Politics in the Age of social Media”, “Random House India”iii[]http://www2.mitre.org/public/jsmo/pdfs/01-01-evaluating-uses.pdfiv[]http://www2.mitre.org/public/jsmo/pdfs/01-01-evaluating-uses.pdfv[]http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/cse571-11/ftp/social.pdfvi[]http://pmi.books24x7.com/assetviewer.aspx?bookid=35846&chunkid=771155376&rowid=260

http://pmi.books24x7.com/assetviewer.aspx?bookid=35846&chunkid=771155376&rowid=260

http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/cse571-11/ftp/social.pdf

http://www2.mitre.org/public/jsmo/pdfs/01-01-evaluating-uses.pdf

http://www2.mitre.org/public/jsmo/pdfs/01-01-evaluating-uses.pdf