Twitter and Facebook as Project Management Tools?
Posted by Brad EgelandMy wife introduced me to Facebook a few months ago and I’ve enjoyed using it to reconnect with friends I haven’t communicated with in nearly 25 years. How cool is that?! I can share pictures, videos and thoughts with all 108 of my friends 24/7. My office is upstairs and my wife’s office is downstairs. I can quickly chat with her (she doesn’t like to use IM) through the chat feature at any time during the day, though instead I usually hear “Braaaaaad!” and have to go down and see what she or one of the kids needs. Ok, I still think it’s kind of lame, but that doesn’t stop me from using it. To me, it’s a “family and friends” tool, nothing more.
As for Twitter – I joined it about a month or so ago. I find it somewhat addictive to go out and check the latest updates from the 96 people and organizations I’m following for their latest thoughts and interests as well as to let the 93 followers that I have know what I’m doing or what article I’ve recently posted. For me Twitter is far more of a business tool than Facebook. It’s Facebook without the pictures and friend connections – it’s just blurb thoughts. But I really only use it for business purposes. I announce articles, conferences, etc. on it. I network with like-minded professionals on it. I realize that some people use it to tell the world what they’re doing every 5 minutes, but that’s certainly not for me.
Now that you know my basis for using Facebook and Twitter, let’s discuss whether either can be a valuable tool for Project Managers and team members on implementations.
The Usual Information Sharing Techniques for PMs
To me, the effective parts of project communication, as I’ve always said, are:
- Weekly formal status reports
- Up-to-date project plans/schedules
- Weekly formal delivery team/customer status meetings or conference calls
- Weekly delivery team calls to prepare for customer communications and ensure everyone is on the same page
- Adhoc calls with the customer on issues or progress
- Adhoc calls with the delivery team members on issues or progress
- Frequent information sharing, status check, and issue alert emails with delivery team members and the customer.
I have honestly racked my brain to figure out a way to make either Facebook or Twitter a useful tool for Project Managers and project team members. I can’t figure it out though.
My Thoughts on Facebook & Twitter
Facebook, to me, is a complete no-go. I can’t find any useful business application for Facebook other than to kill time in long meetings or on long webex’s and conference calls. Nada…nothing.
As for Twitter, because I use it almost exclusively for business networking I’m trying to find some good PM use for it. I share info on my articles when they’re published. I connect with other PM, business and IT professionals that provide information I can use or have deemed my information useful. But as for sharing info with on-going team members…I just don’t see it. Oh, it can be done, but email and phone calls are better. A quick Twitter message could get overlooked. And email stays in your inbox and marked as unread until it is read.
Summary
Again…I’ve tried. I know there are those of you out there claiming that at least Twitter can be a viable way to share information across teams within an organization. If you’ve been successful with it, I’d like to hear your story. Comment here and let me know how you’re using it because information sharing is ALWAYS going to be a roadblock to some degree. Anything that aids information sharing without just providing another grey area path to communication is a welcomed addition. So tell me how you’re successfully using it. Likewise, if you’ve tried and failed, I’d like to hear that as well. Until someone convinces me otherwise, I can’t visualize a way to use either Facebook or Twitter as a viable Project Management communication tool.
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Brian says:
Hi Brad,
Great post.
I share your feelings about Facebook not being suitable for project management; although, if there was a Facebook app or widget that could push or pull info from a centralized PM application, people could review, update, and share project info through their Facebook profile. Not sure how useful that would really be. Facebook could be used as a great marketing tool though.
As for Twitter, I’ve seen it being used as a way to send simple commands to a time tracking system called Harvest. Users can start a timer, log a time entry, log a project expense, and stop a timer. I’ve used Harvest for tracking project time and expenses, but not with Twitter. More details about Harvest here: http://www.getharvest.com/labs/twitter
Yammer is another communication tool that’s very similar to Twitter, but with some additional features and functionality. It’s meant for company use — “Enterprise Microblogging”. More details about Yammer here: https://www.yammer.com/
For the most part though, I also agree with you about Twitter being more appropriate for networking and marketing.
Reggie says:
I agree with you about Twitter and Myspace. They don’t seem to be particularly useful to project managers.
They still have their benefits, though. They make sharing information with colleagues somewhat easier. I’ve found that Facebook is especially useful when I need new information.
When I need general updates about project management as a profession, I visit my alma mater’s website (http://som.utdallas.edu/graduate/execed/projectMgmtProg/). Its got great information about project management degrees and a way to keep in touch with former students and teachers.
Eliane Veillet says:
Hi Brad,
Great article, I agree completely with you. With the growing networking tools now on the web, we get more and more emails (updates, notifications, etc .) and spend more time on reading updates of these various sites, while we should invest that time on phone calls or emails or direct face-to-face conversations. As a matter of fact, the younger generations is starting to have difficulties to converse when its not done through the web… that will be a real challenge sooner than we think when managing these people during projects!
Regards,
Eliane
Dina Garfinkel says:
Nice post, I agree with you that there does not seem to be any way to successfully manage projects using Facebook as it exists right now, but I think we can all learn from the social/sharing environment that it creates.
Imagine if you had your project team setup as a Facebook group, you could hold all communications there. You could post announcements, share links and files, and team members could post status on the items they are working on. There’s no gantt system or way to assign tasks to people, but there’s a great collaboration system there. With the rise of Enterprise 2.0, many companies are changing how their employees work together, implementing these sharing/social work platforms.
So, to respond to what Elaine said, I would argue that the younger people are at an advantage…they are much more accustomed to working in this way and will feel completely comfortable in that environment. It’s the older workers that will have a hard time adjusting. No better time than now to make my plug, I recommend LiquidPlanner as an excellent web based project management tool with all of the collaboration features that the Facebook group has (and a very powerful scheduling engine, the gantt that FB will never have :) – http://www.liquidplanner.com
As for Twitter, I think if a group uses hashtags to file all of their tweets in a specific category, their project information can be tracked easily. I haven’t tried it, but I think hashtags is one way to filter down to the critical information you need. I’ve read about large public companies that tweet their meeting notes, seems like a great idea and an excellent way to have transparency.
Victor Velasquez says:
Here is a Twitter Moment that I want to share with you. We made a blogpost out of it.
Twitter helped us solve a problem:
http://www.nearsoft.com/blog/Twitter-and-Yammer-at-Work.html
Brad Egeland says:
Victor – thanks for sharing. This is an incredible example of Twitter rescuing a project. I still think it falls more in the realm of ‘networking’, etc. I still contend that Twitter is not a useful tool within your own team – certainly not better than phone or email. However, it is great for getting answers to questions and problems solved. Much like a forum, though the reach is much wider and much faster. Thanks for sharing!
Raja says:
Hi Brad,
Read through your interesting post. Must say, very well articulated. I share the same view as yours for the core requirements of successful project management and the challenges/constraints for using Twitter and Facebook as a Project Management tool.
In my view, Twitter and Facebook are great tools if effectively utilised, as in the case of the advt. campaigns.
Priyanka D says:
I agree that using facebook for PM is a no go, cause it has too many functionalities which will have to be ignored, and it does not have many tools like tracking, reports etc.
For twitter I feel it can be an addition along with another PM tool.
In fact we have a twitter like function in our tool, DeskAway, where teams can share their latest thoughts, activities etc.
Aaron Smith says:
Bob Tarne wrote a good piece on Twitter and project management for ProjectsAtWork.com. Here’s the link:
http://www.projectsatwork.com/content/articles/248481.cfm
Brad Egeland says:
Priyanka-Thanks for the comment. As for your Twitter-like tool, DeskAway, is it targeted just for the team/org or does it go to a wide community? I still feel that since Twitter is basically a tool for announcing to the world, then it is not useful for projects. However, if an account is created just for the project and the team all follows it and unnecessary users are blocked, then I could see where it might work. My concerns have always been that too many different communication tools can water things down and critical info may get missed because it went down one channel and not the other.
Brad Egeland says:
Raja-Thanks for joining in on the discussion. I figured there would be a decent amount of commenting due to the heavy usage that each tool gets. I agree – both (especially Twitter) are great for advertising and networking, but lack the focus of being very usable as a team collaboration tool.
Alex says:
I definitely don’t think Facebook would be useful as a project management tool seeing as it’s already used for social purposes that aren’t business related. As for Twitter, since it’s limited to only 140 character messages it wouldn’t work either.
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