Project Management 2.0

Why Project Management 2.0 Is a Different Ball Game

Andrew Filev — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:00:00 GMT

At the PMI Global Congress that I attended in October, I met many project management practitioners. Some of them asked me about my views on Project Management 2.0. One of the questions was “How is Project Management 2.0 different from what many organizations have today?”

I decided to summarize my answers and came up with a short list of key factors that distinguish Project Management 2.0 from traditional project management.
They are:

Environment. Manuel Castells, the author of "The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture" and a visiting professor in 15 universities around the world, states that we are currently experiencing an IT revolution, just like our predecessors lived through an agricultural revolution and an industrial revolution. According to Castells, there is a shift from industrialism (mass production) to informationalism (flexible production), and this new type of economy is empowered by the development of technologies— first of all, the Internet. As the world shifts from an industrial economy to an information economy and big part of the workforce becomes information workers, the importance of innovation, creativity and productivity rises. In traditional project management, people are often managed like any other resource, just like bricks and machines. In the present economy, people cannot be managed the same way, as it will simply be counterproductive. In Project Management 2.0, people are encouraged to participate in project planning, to introduce their ideas on project development and to give their feedback on other team members’ jobs.

Environment as the main differentiator drives the other distinctions listed below:

Collaboration and collective intelligence. In an information economy, only organizations that are flexible enough, so that people and capacity can be rearranged and recombined quickly without major structural change, will be able to thrive. Quick access to information and rapid data-sharing become critically important in this environment, as they help companies minimize expenses, innovate, make better decisions and make them faster. Project Management 2.0 emphasizes the importance of leveraging the collective intelligence of the whole team, no matter where the team members are located, at the same office or on different continents.

At the same time, Project Management 2.0 stimulates collaboration and catalyzes the change in processes. Here I’d like to paraphrase Andrew MacAfee’s quote about Enterprise 2.0 and apply it to the new trend in project management: Project Management 2.0 technologies are “trying hard not to impose on users any preconceived notions about how work should proceed or how output should be categorized or structured. Instead, they’re building tools that let these aspects of knowledge work emerge.” Emergent structures, one of the basic principles of Project Management 2.0, empowers people on the team level to easily share information and make changes to their part of the project plan. This way, bottom-up field knowledge makes its way into a project schedule, and the schedule becomes more realistic. Comparing this approach with the one represented by most current project management platforms, wiki inventor Ward Cunningham highlights an important shortcoming of the traditional way. He says: “For questions like ‘What’s going on in the project?’ we could design a database. But whatever fields we put in the database would turn out to be what’s not important about what’s going on in the project. What’s important about the project is the stuff you don’t anticipate.”

The Project Management 2.0 focus on collective intelligence stipulates the next differentiator.

Shift in the project manager’s role. Traditionally, the project management role is focused a lot on tight control of the budget and schedule. This part of the project management job becomes more subtle in a talent economy. Organizational agility requires a more flexible approach to budgeting and deadlines. At the same time, the importance of leveraging the human talent becomes more prominent. Therefore, other parts of a project manager’s job, such as leadership skills, become more important. It's no longer enough for project managers to possess good people skills and to be fluent in project management best practices, tools and methodologies. To succeed today, project managers need enhanced leadership skills. They need to be flexible and focused on business value, writes Forrester Analyst Mary Gerush in “Define, Hire and Develop Your Next Generation Project Managers.”

Productivity. Web 2.0 tools allow an unprecedented productivity increase when it comes to information-sharing and communications. There are many examples spanning from the consumer arena to the enterprise space, from Wikipedia and Facebook to GE’s corporate collaboration system. Project Management 2.0 focuses on taking advantage of this productivity to achieve better results in shorter periods of time.

Have I enumerated all the distinguishing traits of Project Management 2.0? What’s your take on the main differentiators of Project Management 2.0? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

“Win a Book!” Series: the Collaboration Economy (Review of “Wikinomics”)

Andrew Filev — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:00:00 GMT

When this book was published nearly four years ago, it shook the U.S. business world with its claim that we've barely begun to imagine the ways in which the web will transform our lives as workers and consumers. Later, “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything” was published in 26 languages and was named a finalist for the Goldman Sachs/Financial Times Business Book of the Year award. “Wikinomics” became a popular buzz word, and the ideas first pronounced by the authors of the book influenced the minds of many business people. I’m not an exception. “Wikinomics” had a great impact on my views on executing business, collaboration and project management. This was one of the reasons why I decided to start my "Win a Book of the Week" series with it. The second reason is that this book is a perfect way to start your Enterprise 2.0 journey, as it explains the transformation of the business environment by Web 2.0 technologies in very plain terms.

The main goal of “Wikinomics” is to draw your attention to the processes that take place and trends that emerge in the present economy. Web 2.0 is how companies innovate, build relationships, market and compete. More and more businesses are harnessing the power of collective intelligence with the help of “weapons of mass collaboration,” such as blogs, wikis, tags, social networks, etc. This helps them to get closer to their customers, drive performance, implement service improvements, create new products and more.
The objective of the authors is also to prove that this new way of doing business actually has many more benefits than risks. By providing readers with numerous examples, the authors, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, roll out facts that should not be missed by a company that wants to thrive in the new environment, called “Wikinomics”:

•    Being open and transparent for your customers and partners pays off, as it brings trust to a new higher level.

•    Peering with your customers boosts production of new and improved products and services.

•    Sharing some basic intellectual property helps companies bring products to market more quickly.

•    Acting globally is essential because global alliances, human capital marketplaces, and peer production communities will provide access to new markets, ideas and technologies.

Tapscott’s call to companies is to adapt, and quickly – the changes are here to stay and will continue to unfold as time progresses.

The book also describes a series of business ideas or approaches that are at the root of rapid, collective change. My favorites are:

•    Peer production, driven by “Peer Pioneers," the people who brought us open source software and Wikipedia while demonstrating that thousands of dispersed volunteers can create fast, fluid and innovative projects that outperform those of the largest and best-financed enterprises.

•    Ideagoras – websites or “marketplaces” where businesses can post their R&D needs to the masses and reward the problem-solvers, or offer up their unused inventions that would otherwise lie undeveloped and in secret. These emergent marketplaces for ideas, inventions, and uniquely qualified minds enables companies like P&G to tap global pools of highly skilled talent more than 10 times the size of its own workforce.

•    Prosumers — encouraging/supporting customers who participate in the creation and modification of the product, adding new features or offering uses that your company would have never thought of on its own. I referred to this idea in one of my previous posts “Your Customers Can Help You in Crisis,” and gave an example from my personal experience with developing our project management software, Wrike. While building Wrike, we greatly rely on our users’ requests, suggestions and ideas. It helps us make the product better.

•    Platforms for Participation — opening up your technology to allow others to create or even profit from its use, which may add to your bottom line and/or strengthen your brand.

•    Wiki Workplace, a new corporate collaborative environment that helps break information silos within an organization and connects internal teams. This idea is the closest of all to Project Management 2.0’s general concept: organizing corporate collaboration in a system that lets employees contribute and modify content in a freeform manner, so that structures (plans, schedules and other related project data) emerge over time.

The book itself is a great example of collaborative production. It is an Anglo-Canadian team effort. Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams were separated by the Atlantic Ocean when they wrote the book. These transatlantic roots give “Wikinomics” depth and interest, with numerous case studies from both continents. In addition, one of the chapters in the book was open for edits from its readers for quite a while. The authors work for the same consulting firm, New Paradigm, which marks the book as a client-development project, - but it is none the worse for that. Indeed, the commercial resources mean it is well-researched, well-written and edited with an eye to its sales role.

The book is written in easy-to-understand language and makes a pleasant and interesting reading, as it contains dozens of real life wars stories from companies like IBM, P&G, BMW and Boeing. Of course, some of these examples and stories may not be brand new to you, if you read the blogosphere daily. However, while reading them in “Wikinomics,” you get another chance to analyze them and see whether they may be applicable to your own business.

One of the best things about “Wikinomics” is the website it spawned, where a blog about collaboration and aspects of organizational change is an addendum more vibrant than the actual book.

Though there are some questionable ideas in the book (for example, with all due respect, I doubt that “the participation revolution” will immediately “lift millions of people out of poverty”), “Wikinomics” is definitely worth your attention. “Wikinomics” is an important book for any company or business person trying to understand how to thrive in an age where traditional top-down, command-and-control structures are being challenged. Mass collaboration may sound like a buzz word, but as some have already found out (look for an example in the book), ignoring it could leave you burned. So to those of you who haven’t yet read the book, I strongly recommend it. Those who have read “Wikinomics,” please jump to the comments section and tell us your impressions of the book.

By the way, “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything” is the first book to be given away during the “Project Management 2.0 Books Giveaway”! The author of the best comment to this post will get “Wikinomics” for FREE!

Elements Of Project Leadership

Andrew Filev — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 07:00:00 GMT

This is a guest post by Bas de Baar, the author of ProjectShrink.com. This article originally appeared on his blog. The ideas of this post are aligned with my personal philosophy in many ways, so I felt that you would benefit from reading it here, on the Project Management 2.0 blog.

As a Project leader you are dumped in an organization you have never seen before. You get people assigned you don’t know. The organization prescribes methods and tools you don’t like. And of course, there are a gazillion of unwritten rules.
Welcome to your project life.

You run on partial Information, partial Influence and partial capability.

But how do you actually run a project under these circumstances?

Answer: Project Leadership.

The elements of (my version of) Project Leadership are:

Goals and Means on individual, project and organizational level
Alignment of goals and means on all levels by communication

Goals

A project has a goal, an objective. This is part of the larger context of the goals of the organization.

Individuals have goals, ambitions, interests. If peoples goals are met, they work happy; if not, they don’t.

Job for the Project leader is to align the goals on all levels. Keep on tweaking and adjusting. Make sure everyone understands. Make sure they are all in balance.

Means

Means are the strategies to reach the goal. This is the set of rituals, artifacts and values shared among the group, the organization and individual. The culture.

The culture can be used to create a strong group; it can be in conflict with the dominant structure.

Job for the Project leader is to align the means on all levels for maximal effectiveness. Balancing deviance with compliance. Making sure there are rules of engagement the entire team uses.

Communication

You think that if you are dropped into foreign territory like this, you would get a lot of equipment.

Sorry.

You get your Swiss Army knife: communication.

But in the end, that was all MacGyver needed.

About the Author

Bas de Baar discusses Project Management in a global, mobile, virtual and multi-cultural world through his popular blog and video podcast “The Project Shrink”. With over a decade spent in the trenches as Software Project Manager within the publishing, financial and public sector, running multi-national teams, he has a lot to talk about.

Bas holds a masters degree in Business Informatics and lives with his wife in The Netherlands. He is author of the book “Surprise! Now You’re a Software Project Manager” and is a member of PMI’s New Media Council.

Project Management 2.0 is Nominated for the IT Blog Awards 2009

Andrew Filev — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Today, I entered the IT Blog Awards 2009 held by ComputerWeekly.com. My blog is nominated in the project management category, and I hope you’ll be able to support me in this contest. This is a U.K.-based blogging competition open to blogs that are originated outside of U.K. I think the ComputerWeekly Blog Awards is a great initiative that will help professionals from IT and other industries find the best authors, sharing their real life experience and useful tips. By the way, my fellow blogger Elizabeth Harrin, the author of the PM4Girls blog, won the best IT Project Management blog award from ComputerWeekly.com last year.

What Project Management 2.0 IS and What it IS NOT (Part 2)

Andrew Filev — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Having enumerated the things that Project Management IS in my previous post, I’d like to give you my take on what Project Management 2.0 IS NOT. I see the three main things here.

Project Management 2.0 IS NOT:

Chaos

Lightweight Project Management 2.0 tools and practices bring project management into a new context. However, unleashing freeform collaboration with the help of the new technologies does not mean the loss of control. Quite the opposite is true. When people start collaborating in a freeform manner with the help of emergent structures, they create a more rational and practical way of working on a project. Now it’s the project manager’s role to lead his people and coordinate their jobs. Every team needs a leader who will motivate it and show the right way for a project to be developed, as well as make sure the project is completed on time and on budget.

Replacement

The emergence of Project Management 2.0 does not imply that traditional project management methodologies will be gone forever. In today’s world, we come across a wide variety of projects, from creating a web site for a small business with 3 employees to the construction of a new power station. It is obvious that these projects cannot and should not be managed in the same way. Traditional project management methods help in many cases, but they clearly do not work for all projects. Project Management 2.0 extends project management, but it by no means eliminates the proven methods.

Panacea

Each project involves the three basic elements: people, processes and tools. These three should always be in balance. This balance was the topic of my post “Can Adoption of Project Management 2.0 tools Guarantee Success of Your Projects?” A project will be a success when you choose the right people for the job, equip them with the right tools and make sure the processes support the team’s productivity. If the triangle is misbalanced, the project may be prone to failure. The weakness of one of these three elements will have an impact on the whole project. It is also true for project management software. Project Management 2.0 tools alone can hardly do the whole job, but they can empower people, and they can catalyze the changes in processes.

Another thing that Project Management 2.0 is not is that it’s not an instant change. It is true that small and medium organizations are taking the lead in adopting Project Management 2.0, as they are definitely more flexible than large, hierarchical organizations. But again I agree with Craig Brown that “most (large) enterprises are aware of the changes in project management and are accommodating them to some degree” and that “many leading organizations have fully exploited the benefits from them.” There are plenty of real life examples. I see them every day on my job with our customers, and I talk about them every day with fellow entrepreneurs and employees in leading innovative companies. You can just log on to Twitter and see what real project managers and business owners are saying about project blogs, wikis, and tools like Wrike, Basecamp, Central Desktop, Zoho, etc. Do you have an example to share? Please do it in the comments.

What Project Management 2.0 IS and what it IS NOT (Part 1)

Andrew Filev — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:00:00 GMT

The topic of Project Management 2.0 becomes hotter with the development of the trend. More and more people get vibrant interest in the subject and start asking important questions about the essence of Project Management 2.0. I started this blog in 2007 and posted my first take on Project Management 2.0 definition in January, 2008. The trend evolved, as does my thinking, so it’s about time to elaborate on that old definition and give you my take on what Project Management 2.0 is and what it is not.
What it IS about

Democratization

The project management discipline as it’s traditionally known “emerged in the 20th century, specifically around the Second World War, through the mega projects that were required. This period can be looked as a catalyst in the evolution of project management with the need to organize vast quantities of resources and personnel to achieve critical objectives in specific timeframes.” Traditional project management built many successful tools and processes that helped to increase the chances of success in those projects.

Now, the projects around us are quite diverse, and today a few of us are managing mega projects. For starters, SMBs employ over half of all private-sector employees in the United States. These companies run numerous projects that don’t span hundreds of people. So at least 50% of the U.S. working population today is involved in smaller projects. If we take a look at large organizations, many employees there aren’t running mega-projects, either.

The project management space is changing and the change is not only about the size of the projects. Traditional project management developed in an industrial economy. Today, many of us are working in a creative economy and creative projects are different.

New types of projects emerge and successfully develop without traditional methodologies, PMBOK and PPM software. New companies use lightweight processes based on common sense, as well as easy-to-use management and collaboration tools to support those processes. It’s simply amazing what a huge difference these lightweight processes make to the world. Was Google, which started as a student project, following a heavy project management process when they built their disruptive technology? Certainly, not. Nevertheless, they have about 20,000 employees, keep innovating and still aren’t keen on heavy project management processes that simply would not have worked for them.

Of course, you may say: “NASA is building billion dollar space missions differently.” Well, I think you would still agree that what works for NASA’s space-ship project won’t necessarily work for a marketing department in your company and vice versa. Just ask your co-workers who run marketing projects.

It’s about time to move project management out of the industrial economy, and to bring it into a much larger context and democratize it, if you will. Now, if heavy processes and expensive tools aren’t working in many environments, is there something that can increase productivity and the chances of success?

Shift toward collaboration and business agility

One of the sources to find an answer to this question is Gary Hamel’s article Management 2.0. Gary Hamel, is a professor at London Business School and the No. 1 most influential business thinker in the world, according to the Wall Street Journal. His pioneering concepts, such as “core competence”, have changed the management in companies like General Electric, Time Warner, Nokia, Nestle, Shell, Best Buy, Procter & Gamble, 3M, IBM and Microsoft. Here’s what he has to say about traditional management practices: “In the years to come, progressive companies will use the Web to overcome the shortcomings of their antiquated, bureaucracy-based management models – flaws that today severely inhibit the capacity of these organizations to adapt, innovate and inspire.”

Project Management 2.0 is brought by the development of the Web, and it offers a major shift of focus from control to collaboration. Collective intelligence is one of the core principles behind the whole idea of the new project management trend. Project Management 2.0 tools and practices help people to share project information and contribute to the project plan easily. They help gather valuable bottom-up knowledge from emails, disconnected files and spreadsheets into one place. Anyone on the team, and what’s more important, the project manager has the up-to-date information at hand. When it’s clear for a manager what his every team member is busy with and what exactly is going on with every project, and when project operations become more transparent, projects become more controllable and project management more adaptable. This has a tremendous positive effect on the whole company, as it becomes more flexible and can easily acclimatize to any changes in the business environment. Here’s one of my favorite examples: In April 2006, Intrawest Placemaking, a real estate development firm that operates in North America and Europe, undertook a bold technical initiative focused on empowering individual employees. Today, Intrawest Placemaking's wiki intranet allows practically unrestricted editing for all 250 employees. This has led to a tenfold increase in use over the previous intranet, and some excellent examples of knowledge-sharing: One manager created a page with an idea that saved the company $500,000.

The example only proves Craig Brown’s words about Project Management 2.0: “Over the last decade or three, many organizations have learned to trust their experts. Not all are there yet, but the trend is clear: decentralized decision making means more adaptable and viable organizations. At the same time the Project Management profession has evolved from a focus on WBS, network diagrams and Gantt charts into an ever-increasing awareness of the business and social contexts that projects operate in.”

Balanced approach

Project Management 2.0 tools and practices help you find a perfect balance between top-down and bottom-up management styles. On one hand, they democratize project management by energizing project communications and letting the project team easily make contributions to project plans and data. So the bottom-up field knowledge is brought to project planning. On the other hand, Project Management 2.0 allows project managers to get rid of unnecessary routine tasks, and obtain clear visibility into their project plans and operations. With Project Management 2.0 systems, managers have all the latest information at their finger tips and in real time. This allows them to better coordinate their projects from the top and make better decisions on how the project development should go on. This is how the flexibility and openness of Project Management 2.0 applications allow organizations to harmoniously combine the field knowledge coming from the bottom up with the leadership and guidance coming from the top down.

Besides all the points enumerated above, it is true that the emergence of Project Management 2.0 is stipulated by the evolution of technology. Email, VoIP, mobile networks, smartphones, social networks, and Web 2.0 software changed the processes and culture in many organizations. They even created new types of organizations, like micromultinationals. And while it’s hard to stress enough that people come first and that balanced approach is important, it’s also shortsighted to ignore the opportunities that technologies give us. After all, I absolutely agree with John Reiling, PMP, the author of the PMcrunch blog that Web 2.0, or any other technology, “is the ability for any practitioner to focus on the true essentials of the job, rather than getting bogged down by administrative work.” It’s true that “less time spent on crafting a Gantt chart means more time spent on the true project management essentials, such as stakeholder management, communications, leadership, and the like.” Do you agree? Please let me know in the comments.

Networking, Education and Project Management Resources at the PMI Global Congress

Andrew Filev — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:00:00 GMT

In the first week of September, I started getting ready for one of the biggest project management events of the year. I expect PMI Global Congress to be a very valuable experience. Though my view of project management is not canonical and sometimes generates hot debates around it, I do believe that PMI is doing a good job at building connections between project managers and allowing them to share their experience and skills with each other. PMI events play a significant role in moving the whole industry forward, and I’m happy to take part in one of these events this October in Orlando, Florida.
If you’re still thinking about whether you should go to the Global Congress or not, here are 3 major reasons to attend it:

•    Networking: The organizers and past attendees do a good job at promoting the Congress as a fabulous opportunity to meet 2,000+ project management professionals.

•    Education: The event will feature more than 150 educational sessions. There are a number of great speakers lined up, and learning from them would be useful for your future career. The question of Project Management 2.0 also will be discussed at the event. I know that one of our fellow bloggers, Dave Garrett of GanttHead, who has his own blog focused on Project Management 2.0, will be presenting there. By the way, I’m working on a Project Management 2.0 guide that I’ll be giving away during the Congress, so come visit Wrike’s booth.

•    Resources: If you are on the lookout for valuable project management resources, I believe that PMI Global Congress is just the right event for it. The exhibit hall will feature 100 companies, including Wrike. PMI Career Center promises to hold helpful discussions about project management career paths. And last, but not least, PMI Bookstore will offer great attendee-only discounts.

If you have already registered for the Congress, I’ll be more than happy to meet you there and discuss innovations in project management. Drop me a note at andrew@team.wrike.com or connect with me on Twitter via @andrewsthoughts, and we'll set up a meeting.

By the way, it’s great to see that the Project Management 2.0 topic has become the focus of hot discussions lately. I see it as a positive sign, since “the truth is born of arguments.” I’m also working on a big post about what Project Management 2.0 is and what it is not, in which I’m going to elaborate on my initial Project Management 2.0 definition.

Project Management 2.0 Books Series and Giveaway

Andrew Filev — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:00:00 GMT

I recently posted on the books that I think every Project Manager 2.0 should read. The comments to this post inspired me to create a series of write-ups on my favorite books on collaboration, project management, leadership, productivity and business agility. So from now on, I plan to provide you with my thoughts on the selected works that will allow you to grasp the essence of the emerging Project Management 2.0 trend, as well as help you in your everyday project management battles.

In addition, to make the series more exciting, I decided to run occasional book giveaways. All you will have to do to be eligible for such a giveaway will be to comment on a review. The author of the best comment will get a book for free.

Now, get comfortable, prepare yourself for a few interesting reads about some outstanding books that will help you become a Project Manager 2.0.

The Agile Origins of Project Management 2.0

Andrew Filev — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:00:00 GMT

In my previous post that was also cross posted on CloudAve, I brought up the topic of enterprise agility. My conclusion was: to be agile and adapt quickly to the ever-changing business environment, you need to be able to blend top-down control with bottom-up agility in a "Ying and Yang" style. I also mentioned the latest research, showing that teams that foster a focused, unified dialogue between their members, managers and stakeholders are 250% more likely to thrive in the present economic situation. Less agile teams are 360% more likely to miss millions of dollars in lost opportunities.

The idea of constant interaction and collaboration between managers, team members and stakeholders is not new, however. Here I want to write a few words about the origins of this idea, which later became the background for Project Management 2.0.

Agile Management Essentials

The idea of constant dialogue in project management surfaced in 2001 as one of the principles of so-called agile software development and is described in the Agile Manifesto. According to evangelists of agile methods, cooperation is crucial for the success of a project. Among other key principles of agile management are:

•    Clear vision of the project
•    Fast pace
•    Self-organizing teams
•    Leadership philosophy that encourages teamwork

These principles easily took over the software industry in several years because of the major benefits they bring to companies, such as:
•    Increased productivity
•    Early return on investment
•    Responsiveness to changes in the business environment

Perhaps the brightest examples here are Google and IBM. Among others are Verizon, GE Mobile, HP and Rackspace. Now agile methods are used to manage various projects outside of the software development. One of the agile management methods called Scrum is often used as a best practice for managing various complex projects in an iterative fashion, and it is frequently applied to diverse industries and types of projects. Scrum can be used in business development, customer development, marketing projects and even as a general project management framework in industries like finance, telecommunications, automotive, publishing, etc.

Sounds great, but can agile methods, or any other type of bottom-up management, be instantly adopted in your company? Probably not. If you have ever tried introducing the best bottom-up practices to your organization, you have most likely found it difficult to do that while utilizing traditional tools for project management. I already wrote about the three major gaps of traditional project management software that make them less useful in an agile organization.

Change in Communication

The situation is changing, thanks to the transformations going on in how people share and receive information. More methods for the successful implementation of the bottom-up management best practices have emerged. During the past few years, analysts, the business community and the media talked a lot about the companies that try to boost the productivity of their employees by adopting tools like blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networks, etc. It’s not surprising that tech companies lead the way here. For instance, Intel was one of the first enterprises to utilize internal blogging. As far back as 2003, Intel began encouraging employees to communicate with each other by running their own internal blogs. These quickly gained a large following. In 2006, Intel launched the IT@Intel pilot blog, and in 2007 it rolled out a full blog program called Blogs@Intel. Today, through self-managed blogs and networking profiles, employees are encouraged to provide their own views on what’s going on at Intel and in the computer technology world.

Intel is not the only example. Non-tech companies caught up very quickly. In April 2006, Intrawest Placemaking, a real estate development firm that operates in North America and Europe, undertook a bold technical initiative focused on empowering individual employees. Today, Intrawest Placemaking's wiki intranet allows practically unrestricted editing for all 250 employees. This has led to a tenfold increase in use over the previous intranet, and some excellent examples of knowledge sharing: One manager created a page with an idea that saved the company $500,000.

Web 2.0 for the Enterprise

This trend was recognized by technology and business experts, and in 2006, Andrew McAfee, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, coined the term “Enterprise 2.0.” The essential element of Enterprise 2.0 is freeform collaboration. Enterprise 2.0 gives people the capability to create, modify and mange information with ease. Using simple, Web-based tools, relevant and up-to-date knowledge within your organization can be found, tracked and shared efficiently. Leveraging the collective intelligence of employees brings real competitive advantages to organizations. It increases innovation, team productivity and agility.

Does it work in the real world? It does, and there are hundreds of examples proving it. Here are some of them:

-    Simon Sproule, Nissan’s corporate vice president, is convinced that corporate social networking pays off. He recognized that Nissan’s internal social networking site "makes it easier for employees to tap into the expertise they need to do a better job."

-    Euan Semple, former head of knowledge management for the BBC, claimed the organization was getting "enormous benefits" from Enterprise 2.0. He reported to Forrester that BBC had 23,000 bulletin board users, 4,000 wiki users and over 400 people blogging.

-    General Electric, the venerable multinational corporation that was founded in 1878 in New Jersey, has at its core a hugely sophisticated enterprise collaboration system that is arguably the largest in the world. GE’s ‘SupportCentral’ users have created over 50,000 communities with over 100,000 experts signed up to answer questions and manage information. The experts are GE workers with full-time jobs who use the system because it helps them do their jobs better.

Today, thanks to the influence of Enterprise 2.0 practices, Web 2.0 tools and agile methods, project management is evolving on a broader scale in a diverse set of industries that range from professional services to manufacturing. This evolution is often called Project Management 2.0

Now you are welcome to join the discussion. Have you tried managing your projects with agile methods? What tools were you using? Can you name any other trends that influenced the appearance of Project Management 2.0? Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments.

Project Management 2.0 is Featured on the SlideShare Home Page

Andrew Filev — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 07:00:00 GMT

I’m very excited that my Project Management 2.0 presentation was chosen by the SlideShare editorial team to be featured on the SlideShare.net home page! It has already been viewed 1240 times, and this number is rapidly growing! I hope that all the viewers find my slide deck helpful. Thank you very much for your interest and support. For those who still haven’t seen the slides, you’re welcome to check them out right now and view the Project Management 2.0 presentation.
As always, your feedback is welcome in the comments.