Blogging - The Project Manager’s New Best Friend?
 |
(businessandblogging.com) A lot of our conversation about blogging and business has focused on customer relationship or marketing. There’s a lot more to it than that, as many project managers have discovered.
One of the key elements in project management is communication. Traditionally, project management communication has been done through meetings, progress reports, or phone calls. Each of these traditional methods has a drawback - they’re time consuming!
Holding a meeting takes a lot of orchestration:
- You have to find a place to meet.
- You have to determine a time when all participants are available.
- Holding the meeting ties the participant’s time (often for an hour, or more).
Written progress reports take time to compile and may not reach all members of the project team. You also need to find a way to organize the reports so that you can find one again if you need it.
Holding a project management phone call also has drawbacks. If there will be more than two participants, you need to reserve a conference line. You have to make sure that everyone is available. Plus, participating in a project phone call takes time.
Project management blogs can solve a lot of the problems associated with traditional communication methods. It’s easy and inexpensive to set up. Team members can read the project blog when it is convenient for them. They don’t need to be available at the same time to view the blog. Plus, the participatory nature of blogs fosters collaborations. Enable comments and anyone on the project team can provide feedback.
On a post titled Project Management Blogs - How To Run Your Project on the Web, Chris Garrett explains how blogging can enhance traditional project management communication. In fact, Chris comes up with seven unique ways that a project management team can use a blog.
If you are concerned about that blogging might compromise the security of your project, don’t be. Remember that many corporations have an internal web, or Intranet. Blogs can easily be set up behind the security of a corporate firewall, where the “outside” world can’t see.
Does your company already use blogging as a project management tool? If so, we’d like to hear from you?
Tags: blogging-projects, Chris-Garrett, managing-projects, Project Management, project-management-blogs, project-management-teamRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Corporate, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, Project Management
4 opinions for Blogging - The Project Manager’s New Best Friend?
Easton Ellsworth
Jan 29, 2008 at 7:44 am
Agree. Blogs can be a great organizational tool - a tool for organizing thoughts, goals and plans between co-workers. More PMs ought to use them.
Laura
Jan 29, 2008 at 9:01 am
Thanks Easton!
Interestingly enough, my husband is a project manager. I asked him about this, and he said that blogs aren’t used by more project managers because the project managers are afraid that the team members won’t read the blog.
It seems like it could easily be fixed. Surely someone could create a plug-in that required to members to “sign” a blog entry, signifying that they read it.
Easton Ellsworth
Jan 31, 2008 at 7:29 am
Well, and how much does it cost to try the experiment? Next to nothing.
Laura
Jan 31, 2008 at 8:19 am
Easton,
I definitely agree that project managers should try blogging as a communication tool. In fact, I’d like to hear from project managers who are using this.
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: