Instant Messaging as a PM Tool

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Communications Management   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   Talent Management  

Instant messaging has been around for a number of years, but there still seems to be suspicion about it in many organizations. There is widespread fear of security issues and reductions in productivity, but let’s face it: Whether the company provides an IM tool or not, people are using it (if only on their personal cell phones).

Instant messaging is a popular tool because it facilitates quick, easy communications, and it’s not going away any time soon. Therefore we may as well embrace it and ensure that IM is implemented in a way that promotes productivity and effectiveness rather than detracts from it.

The Benefits of IM
Let’s leave issues of security to one side for now; I don’t want to turn this into an article on implementation and configuration. There are some policy concerns around use of IM, but the same policies apply to other communication mechanisms--so let’s not get hung up on those, either.

In a 2011 survey by Robert Half, more than half of the CIOs questioned said that they expected real-time communication tools to surpass e-mail in popularity within five years. That’s a pretty eye-opening statistic, and it clearly shows that IM has the ability to become not just a mainstream tool, but a dominant one. I’ll readily accept that CIOs are (as a group) more likely to embrace the technology than some other …

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