How Social Should You Be?

Neil Stolovitsky is a Senior Solution Specialist at Genius Inside.

  Communications Management   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   ProjectsAtWork  

Social media democratizes communication, but many project leaders are cautious about incorporating the technology into their efforts for fear of derailing carefully structured best practices. The key is taming social media’s sometimes chaotic tendencies while leveraging its many benefits.

Project management leaders understand that goal No. 1 is to finish projects on time and on budget. The biggest challenge in this quest is managing the unexpected that inevitably occurs during a project’s life cycle. Making order out of chaos is the true measure of a high-quality project manager.

That’s why many experienced project managers are taking a cautious approach to incorporating social media into their project and portfolio management (PPM) tool belts. While PPM best practices are the biggest influence on a project’s success, tools matter too. And many wonder if introducing social media into carefully structured best practices might add a layer of chaos into the process that may not be welcome.

There’s no doubt social media is infiltrating business operations. Take Yammer for instance. The popular “Twitter/Facebook for the enterprise” service is now used in more than 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies. But a large percentage of those deployments started as rogue Yammer networks set up independently by employees without …

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