Dennis McDonald's Web Site

By Dennis D. McDonald

Lee White in his blog post Re-Imagine Project Management makes the following statement:

Once a project is underway, the most important role of project management is to keep everyone coordinated, i.e. to facilitate communication. If you think about all of the gantt charts, and cost estimates, and dashboards used on a project, they all serve one purpose; to effectively communicate what is going on. If these tools do not accomplish this function they are useless. Social media again can play a key role, because at its heart social media is about communication.

While I certainly agree that communication plays a major role in project management and that social media have an important role to play in project communications, I don’t want to underestimate the importance of the formal tools of project managent. Both are needed, in my view. Formal project management tools can serve as starting point for communications about who is supposed to do what, and when. The larger and more complex the project, the more important role communications plays — and the more inmportant formal tools are in order to keep track of the many different “moving parts” in a large project.

Still, a plan by itself is not enough, project charts and reports are not enough, and communication by itself is not enough. Both leadership and collaboration are needed. Leadership provides direction and judgement, and collaboration involves people working together towards a common purpose. 

Back to you, Lee!