Dennis McDonald's Web Site

By Dennis D. McDonald

• This post responds to Lee White’s Project Language Translation.

Lee makes a very good point in his last post:

The trick is for the project manager to find some mechanism to present the project content in a more consumable format, and to allow the stakeholders to effectively respond without having to learn the “syntax”. Enter Social Media.

I’d take that even farther. The project manager needs to be able to “tune” the message for a variety of audiences. If you follow traditional RACI definitions you can see that the communication options appropriate for different interest groups are quite different:

• Responsible - The role is the person/team responsible for the deliverables of this contract/service.
  
• Accountable - Ultimate Decision Maker in terms of this contract/service
• Consulted - Who must be consulted before action is taken on this contract/service. This is 2-way communication. These people have an impact on the decision and/or the execution of that decision.
• Informed - Who must be informed that a decision or action is being taken. This is a 1-way communication. These people are impacted by the decision or execution of that decision, but have no control over the action.

The channels and media you use to communicate with individuals in these groups will differ just as the message you use will differ. The added dimension with the availability of social media (click here to link to a definition of social media) is that the project manager has the ability to establish a relationship with the “community” of individuals in these different groups.

This is why, as you scan the currently available tools available to project managers, you see that, increasingly, traditional “project management” features are being supplemented with collaboration and social networking features for those instances where back and forth interaction and group information sharing and discussion are important.

Social media can be viewed as doing more than just offering a more targeted way to interact with a project’s interest groups. For some people social media represent a fundamental shift in control; when you transform a one-way conversation to a two way conversation you imply by your actions that you care about what people will be communicating back to you. Not everyone is comfortable with this, including some project managers who are accustomed to having their word taken as “law.”

A question I will pose to Lee is: are there particular situations — or types of projects — where social media tools are particularly appropriate? 

• This post is part of the series A Conversation about Project Management and Social Media which includes posts by Dennis D. McDonald and Lee White. Lee will respond to the above post on his blog. Our posts in this series along with selected comments will be listed here.