Project Teams Go Social
Introduction
Employees are already using collaborative and social networking tools, with or without your organization's official blessing. They're finding ways to utilize these tools to share information and collaborate on business in an unstructured, informal way. So while many health care organizations struggle to find ways to live with the social/business networking and collaboration trend, you can be ahead of the curve by giving your project teams the permission to thrive on it. It's a great opportunity for improved success from a project management perspective.
In our project-management consulting business, we've had success with three collaboration and social networking tools for project teams: Microsoft SharePoint, Facebook and LinkedIn. These tools can help create an environment conducive to informal learning, team collaboration, and information access and decision-making. However, it's up to project managers to take these collaboration and social networking tools and mold them into a powerful project-management function.
APS Healthcare of White Plains, N.Y., exemplifies how health care organizations can incorporate this culture shift into business success. The integrated health care solution provider is in the process of upgrading and redesigning its internal information portal to Microsoft SharePoint with new content and services. As part of the project, APS Healthcare is conducting information and requirements audits to document critical content, organize information, and design navigation and workflows for ease of use. It's a critical step in recognizing the importance of informal learning, team collaboration and information access for the health care organization's internal staff.
Better learning opportunities
Approximately 75 percent of actual corporate learning and training occurs in an informal setting outside of a classroom. In fact, the most valuable learning often takes place serendipitously, by random chance. Informal learning describes a lifelong process through which individuals acquire attitudes, values, skills, and knowledge from daily experience and the educational influences and resources in his or her environment, from family and neighbors, from work and play, from the market place, the library and the mass media. Opportunities for this to happen have increased substantially since the dawn of online social networking.
Crowd sourcing is a term being used today to explain the process of gathering information from social networks. The individual learner can decide what exactly he or she needs to learn today in order to complete an assigned project, and then source a social "tribe" to find the answer.
Project teams can use collaborative and social networking tools to support this kind of informal learning by allowing team members to:
- find and connect with an available expert who can answer that "very important" question;
- read an internal whitepaper or article available in the corporate knowledgebase or project team site;
- download a template that guides them through a new process;
- attend a live or recorded internal webinar on a topic critical to their success; or
- complete a single module of an online training course that addresses the specific knowledge or skill they need.
SharePoint, for example, was recently introduced by a major corporation along with Microsoft Project Server to create an effective project management tool suite on a $1.2 billion program. One of the most often-used sections of this particular collaborative tool suite is the repository of project documentation. This large-scale library is organized by major topics, as well as by project phases. The tool suite enables project team members to quickly filter documents to drill down and "zero in" on exactly what is needed. Of course, project team members can also use the search box and enter keywords to find the target document. For smaller-scale projects (this specific tool suite houses 45 project plans representing approximately 500,000 tasks), Facebook and LinkedIn can create informal repository environments as well.
Better collaboration between team members
Today we're all pressured to achieve project success with existing (or, in some cases, diminished) staff. To accomplish this, each project team member must make bigger and better contributions than ever before. Everyone is a potential thought leader. Additionally, the collective intelligence of a group can far surpass than that of an individual member of the group. In fact, researchers investigating how some of the world's most productive scientists achieved great success have determined that measurable breakthroughs take place through simple, open and honest conversations during risk-free collaboration. This is the essence of social networking for business.
This collaboration - the basis for bringing together the knowledge, experience and skills of multiple team members - requires effective team work. Collaborative and social networking tools can help achieve this by helping to:
- provide portals with easy access to collaborative work spaces;
- improve the ability of team members to share with each other;
- boost project and organizational collaboration.; and
The idea is to organize sites around common concepts such as a Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, a Risk List, Action Items and a Document Library. Collaboration on document development becomes easier when drafts no longer need to be e-mailed to everyone, and when check-in/check-out features enable version control.
In addition, collaboration tools can encourage and deepen team relationships and networking. Since business "gets done" through relationships, this as a positive development. By either adding team member profiles to SharePoint via the My Site feature, or by encouraging team members to use LinkedIn and Facebook, which both put user profiles center stage, people can easily share common interests with others.
Better decision-making through improved information-gathering
Communication, collaboration and relationships provide a foundation that can enable effective project work. However, one of the most potent reasons to embrace collaborative tools such as SharePoint is to improve information access and availability in order to enhance decision-making and management of project risks.
The decision-making process takes place in a "decision environment," which would provide all possible information, and all of this information would be accurate. In reality, however, information is constrained because the time and effort required to gain it is usually limited. Since decisions must be made within a constrained environment, the major challenge of decision-making is uncertainty. In other words, we can almost never have all information needed to make a decision with certainty, so most decisions involve an undeniable amount of risk.
According to the Project Management Institute, poor information access is often reported as a primary cause of technology project failure. Providing improved information access for all team members enables faster use of critical information and, thus, enhanced decision-making and project management.
Recent research indicates that people typically waste 15-30 minutes daily searching for information. This adds up fast for the typical project team. In fact, research firm IDC found that organizations waste up to $14,000 per knowledge worker each year because those workers are unable to find information, forcing them to resort to recreating existing data.
One way to improve information access is to simplify workflows by standardizing and streamlining project processes. This means that people no longer have to remember what to do within a process; instead, they are alerted when a process requires their response. For instance, Microsoft Office Professional 2007, in conjunction with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007, includes built-in workflow services for tracking feedback and approval.
Another way to improve information access is to organize the collaborative site around project phases, processes and/or repositories to make it easier for team members to quickly find the information they need. SharePoint also supports dashboards and KPIs, which compile critical information that project managers and team leads can use to determine progress and status and to make decisions.
Embracing technology
Project teams should take full advantage of collaboration and social networking tools to enhance informal learning, collaboration, and information access and decision-making. While technology is never absolute solution, collaboration and social networking tools provide a strong foundation for substantial project management improvements. SharePoint is a great example of this, when it is implemented and configured to meet the needs of an individual project and project team members. Success also requires providing the training, standards and processes that team members will need for effective use. You should encourage and advocate use during and after the rollout of any new tool.
Embrace collaborative and social networking technology to ensure that your project team members have the best information and the tools they need to access and use it efficiently.
Dr. McGraw is founder and CEO of Cognitive Technologies, a consulting firm specializing in project management, collaborative processes and organizational effectiveness for federal and state government and Fortune 1000 companies. You can reach Dr. McGraw at Karen@cogtechinc.com or by visiting http://www.cognitive-technologies.com./