Work Management Using Social Media

A few days ago Elizabeth Harrin of the Girl's Guide to Project Management blog, published the results of her survey Social Media in a Project Environment.  A colleague introduced me to the study knowing I supported incorporating the communication and collaboration aspects of social media into project management tools.  Harrin explains her reasons for compiling the survey like this, "There's growing evidence that ways of working are adapting to include social media tools and that these are becoming prevalent in the workplace.  While social media practices are established for marketing, brand awareness and customer outreach, I felt that project managers should be taking advantage of the available tools—and I wanted to find out if they were."

If you follow the link provided above you can download a PDF of the survey (which is very informative).  That being said, rather than plow through the entire thing, there are a couple of highlights I found interesting:

1. One of the most widely used social media tools by project managers for business is Linkedin.  47% of respondents use Linkedin, which makes sense to me.  Linkedin provides an opportunity to connect with friends and peers along with the ability to participate in a broader community of project managers.  As I've mentioned before, participation in an online community is a great way to share best practices and experiences that ultimately benefit individuals and the profession.
2. Wikis are a popular social media collaboration tool.  A useful tool for encouraging collaboration and communication, at 35%, it looks like a lot of project managers are using wikis.
3. At 24%, it looks like project managers are active bloggers and blog readers.  Of course a blog doesn't offer a very practical way for project teams to collaborate, but like wikis, blogs are a great place to learn from others within the project management community.
4. Interestingly, online project management tools are used by 27% of the respondents.  For anyone providing on-demand project management software like @task, this is good news.
5. Facebook, Twitter, SharePoint, MySpace, Microsoft LiveMeeting, Skype, Instant Messaging, Podcasts, and Video podcasts round out the rest of the survey.  From as low as 1% for MySpace to the 48% that identify themselves as SharePoint users, social media appears to be alive and well within project management.

The primary way project managers are using social media is to stay in touch with friends and colleagues, however document sharing, communicating status updates, sharing project information, and even task tracking made the list.  I guess the question then becomes, "Does social media provide any benefit to the project in terms of increases in productivity?"

The answer seems to be yes.  62% of the respondents said that it improved communication while another 56% claimed improved collaboration.  According to Harrin, "More people report gaining efficiency benefits than financial benefits, and the two seen most often were improved collaboration and communications." However, "Not all companies are tracking benefits of the social media tools deployed."

The final question of the survey was, "Social media tools can/do improve the way I manage projects."  83% of respondents agreed.

So I guess we can put all the discussion about social media to bed because it is obviously increasing productivity, right?  I don't think so.  Those who responded to Harrin's survey were social media users, who at the very least read her blog, which would skew the results in favor of applying social media to the project management process, in my opinion. 

However, I believe it does say that there are aspects of social media that can help facilitate, and even encourage, collaboration and communication among project teams.  Social media tools not typically used by the surveyed population, like Facebook and Twitter jump from 3% and 11% respectively for those using that media for business purposes to 23% and 29% respectively for those who use the tools for business and personal use.  I don't believe it's the specific media that is as important as how the media is used.  Linkedin, blogs, podcasts, and video seem to be very effective ways to share best practice and educate, while wikis, Twitter, and Facebook offer something that encourages people to interact and collaborate—important activities for successful projects.

I have gone on record as an advocate of making project management software more "social."  I believe the PPM software that is successful at incorporating those features of social media into their products that facilitate communication and collaboration will provide incredible value to the work management process—those who can't will ultimately become obsolete and irrelevant.

How does your organization stack up to the results of this survey?  Are you incorporating social media into your processes?