Secure Online Community Sites have been established for user groups who actively engage in information sharing. Within the online community environment, project management practitioners, PMI® members, Headquarters staff and other designated Online Community users may have access to Online Community and Collaboration Sites.
According to a PMI® Press Release the overall benefits of the Online Community and Collaboration Sites will be:
The PMI® Online Community and Collaboration Sites Homepage is at http://communities.pmi.org
If you think that the discipline of project management needs more communities of practice take a look at the Yahoo PM Discussion Groups. Go to the Yahoo Groups site at http://groups.yahoo.com and insert the search string of "project management". More than 989 Discussion Groups dedicated to the discussion of some aspect of project management are listed. And this does not list some of the more popular Yahoo discussion groups like PM-talk and PMPPrep dealing with the PMP® certification process.
The majority of these groups have a membership of less than 10 but there are some like "project guidance" with 510 Members, risk management with 43 Members eProjectExperts with 161 that seem to be popular stops for project management discussions.
The overwhelming majority of the groups are general in nature and deal with a similar "discussion of project management" goal. However, others range from a focus on a particular piece of PM software, Special Interest Groups (SIG's), a PMI Chapter to support of the PMI's PMP® Certification Examination process.
Others are most particular. For example, one is for the Students of PM Outreach (Sydney Australia) another a collaboration of South East Asian project management practitioners. An interesting group is the ID_BOK_Team who have a "charter" to develop an International Development Project Management Body of Knowledge.
The Viewpoints Column for January 03 has a discussion of PM Discussion Boards and Discussion Lists reflects recent experience of the PMFORUM to maintain a community of PM practice through use of a set of discussion boards. The overiding lesson learned from the PMFORUM PM Discussion Groups is that
"The Members did not have a clear purpose other than a general interest in project management happenings and affairs. The Welcome page provided a premise of group goals but these were in the main not embraced by most of the community. The result was that the Discussion Boards just motored along without much useful discussion or information exchange taking place."
Further that
"There were some management problems and issues experienced with the PM LEARN and PM FORUM Discussion Boards. The most significant was keeping the group focused on the objectives of the Board and deleting the bad guys who posted messages that had no connection to PM or were blatent commerical offerings. The overiding issue was that most postings were top of the head and not of much value to learning or information exchange. Both needed a pro-active PM mentor to monitor the threads and keep the Board in focus. The Boards limped along with the premise that any road will get you there if you do not know where you are going."
The reaction of most on hearing of more than 1000 Yahoo PM Discussion Groups might be that the discipline is exploding world wide and the number of Yahoo Groups is a measure of the interest in project management. While this is true to some extent it can best be compared to the dot com bubble of some years ago. The Discussion Board bubble will burst and most will wither away.That is, it is unlikely that these groups will continue to thrive. The survivors will be those that meet the criteria of
It is unlikely that this number of disparate discussion groups will survive more than a year or so. . Those that meet a genuine need for discussion of project management that contributes to personal development will survive.
There may be a Yahoo! Discussion Group of interest to your personal development, area of application or corporate advancement. For more visit the Yahoo! PM Discussion Groups at http://groups.yahoo.com to take a look for yourself.
Editor PM World Today