Comments on: Twitter and Facebook as Project Management Tools?

By: More Discussion on Twitter and Facebook as Collaborative Tools | Project Management Tips || Project Management, Collaboration and Knowledge Management Blog

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 04:43:47 +0000

[...] already touched on this in my earlier article entitled “Twitter and Facebook as Project Management Tools?” In that article, I came to the conclusion that there is no real viable use in PM for either [...]

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 22:51:01 +0000

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.

By: Brad Egeland

Brad Egeland — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:19:03 +0000

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.

By: Brad Egeland

Brad Egeland — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:59:25 +0000

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.

By: Aaron Smith

Aaron Smith — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:42:25 +0000

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

By: Priyanka D

Priyanka D — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:41:29 +0000

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.

By: Raja

Raja — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:33:19 +0000

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.

By: Brad Egeland

Brad Egeland — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:46:09 +0000

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!

By: Victor Velasquez

Victor Velasquez — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:33:41 +0000

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

By: Dina Garfinkel

Dina Garfinkel — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:40:30 +0000

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.