In this presentation, recorded at the PMI Global Congress in Orlando, she discusses the following topics:

• New Media Never Sleeps
• Without Business Value, New Media is Just More Noise
• Suddenly, Everyone’s an Expert
• We Hate Being Vulnerable
• Not Everyone Wants to Participate

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This recording is part of a session “Why Should You Care About Social Media?” at PMI Global Congress 2009 by the PMI New Media Council. Other parts of this session can be found here:

Collaboration With Skype, Vyew and Google Docs
Using Yammer For Frictionless Communication

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Be Careful With Social Media: Words Of Caution

You can click here if the episode isn’t displayed below.

This recording is part of a session “Why Should You Care About Social Media?” at PMI Global Congress 2009 by the PMI New Media Council. Other parts of this session can be found here:

Collaboration With Skype, Vyew and Google Docs

Subscribe with iTunes to "The Project Shrink" video podcast.

Using Yammer For Frictionless Communication

“I thought this was a blog about Project Management… uhm … Project Leadership?”

Thanks for bringing that up. Yes it is. In my view a project is nothing more than a bunch of people interacting together to achieve a certain goal. And it’s the role of the Project Manager to make sure the sum of the interactions fulfills the desired goal.

So, it’s about communication, and it’s your job to make sure communication is good.

If people know what you’re about, what your thing is, they know when to contact you, and when not.

You don’t contact me with questions about your critical-path. I know about it, but it’s not my thing.

By setting expectations on what you’re about, you can steer the assumptions people have about you in the right direction, with as a result improved communication.

But first, you have to know yourself what you are about.

What is your thing?

Finding out is a fabulous training for communication. You have to dig deep and find the words to express what you have found.

Sometimes people need a manifesto to explain what they are about. I love Chris Guillebeau’s Guide To World Domination and Ken Thompson’s Bioteaming Manifesto.

My manifesto can be summed up in one sentence:

“If your project sucks, you must have earned it.”

I try to explain this a little more. I still struggle finding the right words.

I started creating slidedecks for this purpose. It’s a medium that works for me.

By explaining yourself and engaging about “your thing” you practice your communication. And you learn a lot about yourself while you are at it.

Find out what you are about. It improves your communication. It improves communication with you.

If you need help with that, or want to tell what your thing is, just leave a comment.

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Why You Should Know What You’re About

Conversations get strange. You’ve never met a person, yet you think you know them. You associate them with the agile crowd, the lean posse, the social media gurus or any other label in existence. And presto, you have a whole set of assumptions about your conversation partner.

It’s strange, but also very powerful. You can skip the obvious stuff and dive directly into some interesting topics
to discuss. You connect faster.

If you are involved on the internet, you can nurture the labels put on you. At least, so we think.

Yeah, yeah, this is about personal branding.

Years ago when I started blogging, I decided to cover “projects and humans”. There is no way I can pronounce “The Project Sociologist” (my first option). So it became “Project Shrink”.

People remember that name. Not my real name. But they remember “Project Shrink”. Because it’s funny. It’s short. But in general, people have no real topic associated with that name other than “something with humans”.

I am not the Kanban-guy, the Scrum guru, the Monte Carlo Simulator or SharePoint-man.

That’s a Personal Branding sin. People have to know “what you’re about”.

I started out writing about “Project Management”. But under that label humans don’t play a role. (At least, that’s what I’m told.) In “general management”: yes. In “human resourcing”: yes.

So I adopted “Project Leadership”. Now that is a lovely area in which you can throw any human topic you can imagine. The drawback is, nobody really knows what it is exactly. It may be a safe label, but it’s not an effective one.

I like discussing how you can combine different project approaches effectively. Dave Prior came up with “Project Mashups”. I tried “Freestyling“. I liked “Project Management 2.0″, but that has “Project Management” in it, and, as I explained, “Project Management” doesn’t do humans. Besides, it’s been taken.

And don’t get me started about the responses you get when you use the word “Social Media”!

Currently “Project Shrink” stands for “Project Leadership/Social Media” – guy. That’s my view on the matter.

At a recent PM congress I found out that I am “the video guy”. Just because I am weird enough to walk around in a suit with a cheap flip cam (ha! there are more of us!).

300 thought provoking posts about projects could not do what walking around with a $100 electronic gadget
established.

So, it seems: weird is good.

Or perhaps: more distinctive is good.

With a gazillion PMPs and agilistas, it doesn’t make any sense to use that label as a differentiator.

You have to be in a party of one. Or two. Max.

You have to make up your own words, otherwise you end up in some kind of turf war, yapping about semantics.

And than, hope it sticks.

And that’s the great thing when people know you from your blog. You get a glimpse of what you are really about.

Do you know what you’re about? And do you know how people view you?

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The Real Project Shrink.

You can watch our presentation in episode 31 of The Project Shrink Podcast.

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This presentation was the first part of a larger session called “Why Should You Care About Social Media?” This session was presented by members of the PMI New Media Council. In the next weeks I will be posting presentations about Yammer, Personal Branding and cautionary tales using social media.

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Why Should You Care About Social Media?

Video diary by Elizabeth Harrin
Jesse Fewell from the Agile Community
Kelley Hunsberger at Voices on Project Management

On twitter, you can follow the event with #PMINAC.

Yesterday I had great fun presenting together with other members of the New Media Council (Cornelius Fichtner, Dave Garrett, Elizabeth Harrin, Hal Macomber, Josh Nankivel and Chalyce Nollsch). The talk was called: Social Networking Presentation – Why Should You Care about Social Media? I have taped the entire session and will post it soon.

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PMI Global Congress 2009

Here is the slidedeck for one of them: The End Of The Human Cannonball: Project Leadership In Today’s World.

“Sometimes you end up doing everything in your project yourself. You become the center of control. But sometimes changes happen so fast, it’s hard to keep up and in control. It seems lately “sometimes” is more often then we would like.

In this presentation he will present the alignment of goals and approaches between organization, project and individuals as the central task of a Project Leader.”

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The End Of The Human Cannonball: Project Leadership In Today’s World

I love Portugal.

I just came back from an amazing road trip through Spain and Portugal. Like I said. Amazing!

And now. Packing my bags for next weeks PMI Global Congress 2009 in Orlando.

If you are attending, drop me a mail, so we can shake hands and drink coffee (webmaster AT softwareprojects dot org).

On Sunday morning (11th) members of PMI’s New Media Council will be presenting “Social Networking Presentation – Why Should You Care about Social Media?“. Cornelius Fichtner, Dave Garrett, Elizabeth Harrin, Hal Macomber, Jerry Manas, Josh Nankivel, Chalyce Nollsch and me will discuss all things Twitter, Yammer and LinkedIn.

This will be great fun. Amazing even.

What Is The Project Shrink About?

Holiday is a great time to reflect. It’s a yearly ritual in which I (re)define the topic of this blog…

The Project Shrink covers two main themes: Project Leadership and Social Media.

Personal Branding Video

It has been a while since I created a video podcast (yes, I know). I will catch up soon. Meanwhile, enjoy this great video from Dave Prior about personal branding.

Branding and Social Media Ep 1 – Interview with Brian Flatow: IT&T SIG Past Chair, Dave Prior interviews Brian Flatow, President of The Ad Store on the topic of social media and personal branding.

Branding and Social Media Ep 1 - Interview with Brian Flatow from PMI - IT & Telecom SIG on Vimeo.

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PMI Global Congress. What About Me? Personal Branding.

Significant changes are taking place in management and especially project management today. We hear that organizations, like the New York Times, Tribune Co., Ernst & Young switched from the so-called top-down management style to bottom-up management. Others, including some of the world’s biggest corporations, such as Toyota and IBM, implemented bottom-up management style elements in some of their departments. The popularity of the bottom-up approach to management is growing. In spite of this fact, the discussions about the two major approaches are still hot. Why have organizations become so anxious about changing their management style? If we compare the two management approaches, the answer to this question will be clear.

Managing projects top-down

The top-down approach remains extremely popular in contemporary project management. The phrase “top-down” means that all the directions come from the top. Project objectives are established by the top management. Top managers provide guidelines, information, plans and fund processes. All of the project manager’s expectations are clearly communicated to each project participant. Following this approach, ambiguity opens the door for potential failure, and the managers should be as specific as possible when communicating their expectations. Process formality is very important for this approach.

Examples of the top-down approach applications can be found in many organizations. One of such example is the New York Times, a leader in the newspaper industry. Several years ago, American Journalism Review (www.ajr.com) reported that The Times’ executive management felt that they were far from what was necessary for creation of a vibrant workplace and a successful organization. Power was centralized and masthead editors experienced overall control. Editors introduced the same management pattern in the projects for which they were responsible. One person’s emotions and opinions influenced all the project decisions, and this person was the project manager. What was the result? Team members felt that they weren’t listened to, that their voices didn’t count. There was no effective collaboration between the journalists. They were not morally motivated to do their jobs. The managing executives then realized that they needed to give more freedom to the teams and change their management style. It took quite a while to introduce bottom-up management to the organization. But, obviously, it was worth the time and effort, as New York Times employees say that collaboration became much more efficient, and team members now work together more productively.

Similar problems caused by utilizing the top-down approach can be observed in many organizations with a traditional management style. Experience shows that this top-down management often results in reduced productivity and causes bottlenecks or so-called lockdowns. A lockdown gives the project manager total control over his team. Such lockdowns can lead to unnecessary pain and significantly slow down a project’s completion.

Bottom-up project management options

The factors mentioned above may play a vital role in a project’s failure, and this is the reason why numerous organizations have turned to a bottom-up management style or at least some of its elements. The New York Times is one of the good examples. The bottom-up approach implies proactive team input in the project executing process. Team members are invited to participate in every step of the management process. The decision on a course of action is taken by the whole team. Bottom-up style allows managers to communicate goals and value, e.g. through milestone planning. Then team members are encouraged to develop personal to-do lists with the steps necessary to reach the milestones on their own. The choice of methods and ways to perform their tasks is up to the team. The advantage of this approach is that it empowers team members to think more creatively. They feel involved into the project development and know that their initiatives are appreciated. The team members’ motivation to work and make the project a success is doubled. Individual members of the team get an opportunity to come up with project solutions that are focused more on practical requirements than on abstract notions. The planning process is facilitated by a number of people, which makes it flow significantly faster. The to-do lists of all the team members are collected into the detailed general project plan. Schedules, budgets and results are transparent. Issues are made clear by the project manager to avoid as many surprises as possible. Bottom-up project management can also be viewed as a way of coping with the increasing gap between the information necessary to manage knowledge workers and the ability of managers to acquire and apply this information.

However, despite all its the advantages, the bottom-up style alone will not make your projects flourish.  According to many experts, the bottom-up approach is not the perfect solution, as sometimes it lacks clarity and control. The best way is to find a balance between the two opposite approaches and take the best practices from both of them.

Perfect balance

If you have tried introducing the best bottom-up practices to your organization, you have probably found it difficult to do that while utilizing traditional tools for project management. Traditional project management software, like Microsoft Project, was mostly designed to fit the use of the top-down approach and is not meant for the bottom-up management style. This software is focused on the project manager and places him or her in the center of the project communications. Team members very often have read-only access to the project plan and cannot make any contributions or changes. The employees send their updates to the project manager in disconnected files via e-mail. The project manager then has to collect all the data and put the information manually into the project plan. After that, he or she has to communicate the changes to the corporate executives. All these routine procedures lead to a situation where the project manager’s talents often are buried by the routine work. The huge amount of mechanical control/synchronization work often leaves little very time for leadership from the project manager.

The good news is 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. These methods include are Enterprise 2.0 technologies – wikis, blogs, social networks, collaboration tools, etc. They come into organizations and change the original way of executing projects. They turn traditional project management into Project Management 2.0 and bring new patterns of collaboration, which are based on collective intelligence. Collective intelligence is a collection of valuable knowledge from different fields that each project team member is an expert in. This knowledge is now successfully collected and shared shared in a flexible, collaborative environment brought by second-generation project management software. The project manager is the one to conduct the work of his team and choose the right direction for the project development, based on the information received from the individual employees.

Thus, the role the project manager plays in the project changes. Project Management 2.0 software facilitates delegation. It means that people become less dependent on the manager as a to-do generator. The project manager turns from a taskmaster into a project leader. His role is to facilitate the team communications, provide a creative working environment and guide the team. He or she becomes a visionary able to leverage the team strengths and weaknesses and adjust the project development, based on various external changes. Individual team members still have the freedom and responsibility to find their way to the next milestone.

With the help of the second-generation project management tools, managers can merge the advantages of the two management approaches. These tools help them to combine control and collaboration, clarity of project goals and visibility of internal organizational processes. 

Thousands of companies, such as Bell Canada, Sun and Yahoo now confirm that bottom-up project management, implemented with the help of Enterprise 2.0 tools, improved their business performance. Some companies created corporate blogs to streamline project communications; others introduced wikis to get their customers’ feedback. Even giants, such as  IBM,  realize the benefits of allowing contributors to have a more active hand in how collaborative work is organized.

My conclusion will be that democratizing project management is never an end in itself. The primary goal is always to find ways to make project management and project collaboration more efficient. New technologies applied to projects offer us the ability to make projects more successful and teams more productive. At the end of the day, projects are delivered faster, and this is to  everyone’s benefit.

About the author: Andrew Filev has been managing software teams since 2001 with the help of new-generation collaboration and management applications. His best practices are based on implementation of Enterprise 2.0 software in project management. Now Andrew is an expert in project management, a successful software entrepreneur and the CEO at Wrike.com, online project management software. Andrew is the author of some influential project management articles, including works for Cutter IT Journal, Web 2.0 Journal and Agile Journal. Andrew is often invited to speak at conferences, symposiums and seminars. Andrew has given speeches on new trends in project management and on implementing Enterprise 2.0 strategies. He spoke at such events as the PMI Silicon Valley Tools and Techniques Forum, Office 2.0 Conference, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Project Management Symposium and others. Andrew’s ideas about improving traditional project management are reflected in his popular Project Management 2.0 blog.

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Top-down and Bottom-up Project Management: Leveraging the Advantages of the Two Approaches

In this interview we discuss concepts like facilitated self-organization and distributed leadership.

Ken Thompson is an former software engineer, project manager and expert practitioner in the area of bioteaming, swarming, virtual enterprise networks, virtual professional communities, virtual teams and management simulation and has published two books, including: “Bioteams: High Performance Teams Based on Nature’s Best Designs”.

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For more information check out Bioteams.com or read the Bioteaming Manifesto.

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Bioteams: What We Can Learn From Nature