Social Project Management in Practice

Yesterday I posted The Social Project Manager. Anna Evans posted a great comment:

"Your point of view has great conversation opportunities. I would love to hear real world application stories and experiences. Would you think this process would lend more success to consultants and out sourced PM?"

Thanks for the comment, Anna. Great question. I started to reply and found myself basically writing another blog post. So here goes:

The first time I really used this approach was about 5 years ago. I was hired as the PM for a project to develop a new website for a city. Since I had worked on projects like this before, I knew what kind of people I needed. I selected a team of the business analysts, developers, IT experts, and testers that I trusted.

As I initiated and planned the project, I involved them at each step along the way, including contract negotiation, charter development, scoping, and scheduling. Sometimes they were there in meetings with the stakeholders, sometimes I consulted with them offline, and sometimes I simply kept them in the loop. Involving the team in that process engendered trust—I understood their perspectives/concerns, and they appreciated the challenges and reasoning behind initiating/planning the project. Most importantly, everyone had a greater sense of ownership that motivated them to personalize the plans and work they committed to. I felt like my plans were more realistic and bought-into.

Very early on, I set up a collaborative online project workspace that everyone—including sponsors and external stakeholders—had access to. Every detail of the plan, from milestones and real-time status to meeting minutes and comments on issues, it was all visible to everyone. Once the project was started, we made public a test server that always had the most recent build from the development machines. Everyone could see the state of the website as it was being developed.

The stakeholders and sponsors were almost giddy with that kind of visibility. They could see our productivity as clear as day. They could appreciate the progress we made every day, and they felt like they were truly a part of the project, because they could see and comment on the progress. That level of visibility also motivated greater team productivity. It was impossible to hide performance—for better or for worse. There was a natural gravitation toward efficiency and results.

Regular and ad-hoc meetings over the phone, via web-conference, and in person helped to expose problems quickly and encourage changes that removed roadblocks or leveraged unique opportunities. There was little need for the traditional project status report—the sponsors and stakeholders knew where the project was going in real-time and were able to voice their concerns at any time—thus helping us to know their concerns immediately and address them before we got too far down the road.

As a team, we were flexible and extremely efficient. I was less of a political head or commander, and more of a facilitator and enabler – I lived to serve the team and make things easier for them. I coordinated and guided, while the team collectively owned the plans and execution from start to finish, which better aligned plans with reality and ensured that the team was totally committed and accountable.

Since that project, I have done my best to incorporate those principles. And to the extent that I have followed (and have been able to follow) the principles that I outlined in my post, I have been successful.

You asked about whether these philosophies better serve a consulting situation. Based on my past experience, I think your generally right. But the reason is not necessarily the organizational environment, it’s more about the cultural environment.

I’ve also been a project manager in matrix organizations where traditional approaches were the expectation. I was able to incorporate some of the principles of social project management, but like I said in the post, there were aspects of the approach that were like oil in water, so I adapted my approach to suit the culture.

The organization I’m working in right now (AtTask), is matrix, but more progressive. We are able to implement virtually all of these principles. In fact, our executive team encourages them. We have our obstacles, and we continue to refine our approach, but I have felt (and I think I can speak for my teammates) that it really works for us.

As a final note, we spent a great deal of time last year doing research, visiting a wide variety of organizations around the US. We were looking for how projects—how work—really gets done. We were looking for inefficiencies to solve and innovative ideas/opportunities. Our observations led us to the approach that I outlined in this post, which was interestingly familiar.

I hope I’ve answered your questions, Anna. If not, or if you have further questions, comments, ideas—I hope you’ll share.

For anyone else reading this who has had similar experiences to mine, or if you have a different point of view, I hope you will share on this thread.

We are currently working on a new version of @task that is built on the principles of social project management. Some of my earlier posts refer to other aspects of these concepts.

If you’re interested in learning more, check out our user conference in May.