I’m at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston at the moment and hopped up bright and early to give a presentation at 8am this morning. I was talking about Social Project Management, but those who’ve seen or read the washing machine presentation will probably find a fair few similarities between this presentation and that old soap box.
As a general overview though, the point of this presentation is that there are other ways to manage projects than ye olde fashioned waterfall methodology. Not to say that waterfall doesn’t have it’s place, but even within that structure, we can be more creative about the way that work within that structure.
In particular, I’m really interested in ways that we can break down monster projects into micro projects and be more iterative in the way that we work, and to work more collaboratively with teams that are made up of multiple disciplines.
As always – would love to hear your thoughts and let me know if there’s a slide needs some more explanation!
First off I want to congratulate you on your lack of bullet point lists. I can’t begin to say how refreshing it is to see a presentation on project management without a hail of bullet points.
As I see it the promise of social project management comes from acknowledging that projects (particularly large projects) are a social activity. People doing work with people, for other people, with commitments to yet other people. The more people (i.e. larger projects), the more interpersonal interactions, the more social effects inside of the project.
The focus on Gantt Charts as an example of something that just doesn’t work is interesting. It turns out that there is a mathematical reason that Gantt Charts the way they are done today just don’t work (when I get a post for this I’ll link here).
This comment is already rather long so I’ve blogged a detailed response on Social Project Management in Large Projects.
Great Post. Although I cringe every time someone says that Gantt charts do not work. As a project manager I find that gantt charts are very important, even if you are using methods other than waterfall. Most of my projects are planned using the Agile Project Management method, and I still use Gantt Charts. Many Collaborative web-based
Project Softwares like Clarizen do not even have a Gantt chart. I think this is a major Minus.