Until recently I thought social networking tools (e.g. Facebook and MySpace) and Project Management had nothing in common. I’m a strong advocate of the old fashioned “face to face” and “pick up the phone” methods of communication. I thought the business value social networking could offer me was negligible. But I was wrong.

What is social networking? “…A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share information, interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others…” source : Wikipedia

So how could this be useful for project management? By placing the project at the centre of the network and changing the online community to the project stakeholders we now have a project network.

How could this add value to your business? Web services providers such as BaseCamp have added to the basic social network framework by including tools such as:

• a shared project file directory
• message and chat boards
• to do lists that can be shared, assigned and tracked
• a calendar to highlight key milestone dates
• project dashboards, alerts and flags to highlight exceptions and inform users of updates to the project, e.g. notification that the latest progress report has been added
• administration tools for setting up users, security and project file archiving.

So what do we think?

Pros:

• we have used Basecamp on a client project and found that it was a good tool to keep a broad range of stakeholders up to date with the project status. So transparency and information sharing was improved.

• the need for users to log on to Basecamp created a barrier to access. Relying on users to remember their user name and password is not a realistic assumption
• project stakeholders were inclined to use their own corporate collaborative tools such as calendars and instant messaging
• the file management tools used for maintaining a project file directory within Basecamp were poor. This meant the project team maintained their own project directories within their corporate environment
• concerns were expressed with the privacy of data stored in the cloud
• administering the site increased the Project Managers workload. We had to constantly re-load new versions of key project documents.

Reflections:

• the project social network worked best for sharing information and transparency
• the sign on barrier needs to be removed using a function like “remember me”
• administering the site could be improved by building specific project management templates in such as status report, graphical project plan and project logs
• we're not sure how important the file management and collaborative functions offered are. While they are useful the biggest benefit is information sharing and transparency.

So, do you think social networking technologies have a place in improving the delivery of projects?