Social project management is a non-traditional way of organizing projects and performing

project management Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. Th ...

. It is, in its simplest form, the outcome of the application of the

Social networking A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

(i.e. Facebook) paradigm to the context of project ecosystems, as a continued response to the movement toward distributed,

virtual team A virtual team (also known as a geographically dispersed team, distributed team, or remote team) usually refers to a group of individuals who work together from different geographic locations and rely on communication technology such as email, inst ...

s. Distributed virtual teams lose significant communication value normally present when groups are collocated. Because of this, social project management is motivated by a philosophy of the maximizing of open, and continuous communication, both inside and outside the team. Because it is a response to new organizing structures that require technologically mediated communications, Social Project Management is most often enabled by the use of

Collaborative software Collaborative software or groupware is application software designed to help people working on a common task to attain their goals. One of the earliest definitions of groupware is "intentional group processes plus software to support them". As re ...

inspired by

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...

. This paradigm enables the project work to be published as

activity stream An activity stream is a list of recent activities performed by an individual, typically on a single website. For example, Facebook's News Feed is an activity stream. Since the introduction of the News Feed on September 6, 2006, other major websi ...

and publicized via the integration with the social network of an organization. Social project management embraces both the historical best practices of

Project management Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. Th ...

, and the open collaboration of

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...

. While Project management 2.0 embraced a philosophical shift away from centralized command and control and focused strongly on the egalitarian collaboration of a team, social project management recognizes the important role of the project manager, especially on large projects. Additionally, while Project management 2.0 minimized the importance of computer-supported scheduling, social project management recognizes that while many projects can be performed using emergent planning and control, large, enterprise projects require centralized control accompanied by seamless collaboration.

History

The concept of social project management emerged during 2008 when some developers of project management tools started to use the term to differentiate between traditional project management tools and tools for

Agile software development In software development, agile (sometimes written Agile) practices include requirements discovery and solutions improvement through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams with their customer(s)/ end user(s), ad ...

. While some have used the terminology Project Management 2.0 and social project management interchangeably, they exhibit significant differences in practice. Communigram-NET, a network of excellence on social project management, has been set up since November 2011.

Key concepts (how social project management differs from Project Management 2.0)

Social business Social business was defined by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and is described in his books. In these books, Yunus defined a social business as a business: * Created and designed to address a social problem * A non-loss, no ...

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

(Social

Business software Business software (or a business application) is any software or set of computer programs used by business users to perform various business functions. These business applications are used to increase productivity, measure productivity, and perf ...

), of which social project management is a subset, powers business performance based upon its ability to assist teams in managing exceptions. Because it is based on the concepts of Social Business Software in general, Social Project Management software is differentiated from other collaborative project software by three key areas of functionality: ''First'', social project management software is embedded into the social network of the larger organization. One goal that Project management 2.0 systems realized was the need to create project-based collaboration systems. However, PM2.0 tools were often adopted at the project level, and not the enterprise level. This led to the situation where team members on several projects might have to use multiple tools for collaboration, depending on what project they were working on at that moment. Additionally, because of the fragmented nature of the tools used, little visibility existed to any person outside of the project team. Social project management is based upon the philosophy that the project team is one part of an integrated whole, and that valuable, relevant and unique abilities and knowledge exist within the larger organization. For this reason, Social Project Management systems are integrated into the collaborative platform(s) of an organization, so that communication can proceed outside the project boundaries. ''Second'', social project management software is organized around a formal project schedule, and all activities and collaborative functionality are linked to this schedule. While PM 2.0 tools stressed collaboration, many tools provided little to no actual project management capabilities. While this often worked very well for smaller projects, especially ones with distributed teams, it could not scale to enterprise-level projects. Social project management embraces the vision of seamless online collaboration within a project team, but also provides for the use of rigorous project management techniques. ''Third'', social project management software provides an

that allows the team, and its stakeholders to build

ambient awareness Ambient awareness (AmA) is a term used by social scientists to describe a new form of peripheral social awareness. This awareness is propagated from relatively constant contact with one's friends and colleagues via social networking platforms on th ...

of the project activity and status. This is what makes social project management "social". The concept of

Ambient awareness Ambient awareness (AmA) is a term used by social scientists to describe a new form of peripheral social awareness. This awareness is propagated from relatively constant contact with one's friends and colleagues via social networking platforms on th ...

enables distributed teams to build awareness in ways that previously was restricted to teams that were collocated. Using the Activity Stream paradigm, large distributed teams are provided with a constant stream of information regarding the project. While in the past, this kind of continuous communication might have been posited to create

Information Overload Information overload (also known as infobesity, infoxication, information anxiety, and information explosion) is the difficulty in understanding an issue and effectively making decisions when one has too much information (TMI) about that issue, ...

, this stream of small bits of information has been shown to create significant alignment between people working together, without overload.

History

Key concepts (how social project management differs from Project Management 2.0)

See also

References

Further reading