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There has been a lot of hype recently about the effectiveness of crowdsourcing that runs parallel to the hype around social networking, which is no surprise since each feed each other. A crowdsourcing project typically gets launch through some kind of social media platform like Facebook or Twitter, and if its popular enough it can go “viral” (to use another hyped term). A great recent example of a crowdsourcing project was the infamous Doritos commercial that aired on the Super Bowl.
This contest allowed consumers to submit their own Doritos commercials that could then be voted upon by the general public to select five finalists in which monetary prizes are given out. Obviously this went viral and generated nearly a million social media comments.
But what if your a project manager tasked with managing a crowdsourcing project? How would you go about managing such a project, especially if you don’t have a brand like Doritos and their deep pockets of funding?
I think before you even consider crowdsourcing a project, you need to have some preliminary items to think through:
- Industry Domain: I think the first order of business is to understand that crowdsourcing projects work best for industry domains such as marketing, advertising, industrial design and open source software projects. You would not want to crowdsource the design and construction of a implantable medical device or pharmaceutical drug.
- Crowd (big/massive team) Management: Crowds will engage with your project for fame, notoriety, money or all of the above. You have to make sure you have the right incentive and furthermore, the added burden of making sure no one is gaming the system or feels as though they are not adequately being rewarded for their contributions.
- Real-Time Communication Management (e.g., social and/or mainstream media): Real-time feedback and communication is absolutely critical in this type of project. Going “viral” is a double edge sword, since just as positive comments on Facebook or Twitter can bring you tremendous momentum, bad press can take you down just as quickly and can mean a PR nightmare for your project and organization.
In this type of situation, you will have to do Agile and beyond. Your crowd will have to be self-organizing. There is no choice, since you are not picking the crowd but rather hoping you generate enough of a crowd to get the talent you need. This will be achieved by having a large enough crowd such that it will suffice to get the talent you need by sheer scale, dumb luck or a combination thereof.
I think you will get iterations, but they will not be the well defined Sprints we are accustomed to, but rather waves of self-correcting iterations provided by the crowd. And rather than remove impediments as a typical ScrumMaster would do, your job will be to provide the right kinds of inducements, rewards or hype to keep the crowd active and moving forward.
Rather than fall to a traditional communication plan or attempt daily stand up meetings, you will have to be a master social media communicator that knows how to nip bad PR in the bud before it goes viral and ensure your updates or status gets linked (“Liked”) and forwarded (“Retweeted”) through the social network.
I’ve seen discussions on the topic of whether social media can be effective in project management. I think when it is done as I have outlined above, is when it can be most effective.
This contest allowed consumers to submit their own Doritos commercials that could then be voted upon by the general public to select five finalists in which monetary prizes are given out. Obviously this went viral and generated nearly a million social media comments.There has been a lot of hype recently about the effectiveness of crowdsourcing that runs parallel to the hype around social networking, which is no surprise since each feed each other. A crowdsourcing project typically gets launch through some kind of social media platform like Facebook or Twitter, and if its popular enough it can go “viral” (to use another hyped term. A great recent example of a crowdsourcing project was the infamous Doritos commercial that aired on the Super Bowl.
This contest allowed consumers to submit their own Doritos commercials that could then be voted upon by the general public to select five finalists in which monetary prizes are given out. Obviously this went viral and generated nearly a million social media comments.
Posted on: February 23, 2012 12:12 AM |
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