By Rainer Volz
One characteristic of virtual teams is the physical distance between the participants. The challenge for the project manager is to make sure that the physical distance doesn't transform into psychological distance. Physical distance can easily be overcome if required, it is much more difficult to align a team's values and goals. If these values and goals are misaligned and the psychological distance in the team grows the project has a communication problem, which usually causes delays and increased efforts due to misunderstandings and rework. Project weblogs could help there.
The conventional way to solve this problem is to have team or project meetings and to support social activities, so that a kind of project community can be created and team members hopefully align their goals with the project's goals. In geographically dispersed projects or large organisations this is often not possible, instead newsletters and occasional organisation-wide gatherings are used to create a shared environment. But these activities are often too rare (gatherings) or too impersonal (newsletter) to be able to create a shared vision. Weblogs could fill the gap and provide means to create a continuous and personal communication flow in a project.
To make the point clear: we are talking here of company/intranet usage of weblogs. We are not interested in the public versions available on the Internet, although it may also be useful to think about specially designed weblogs for external communication. But first, what do they offer for daily communication between teams or individuals?
Easy, fast, and continuous communication: Weblogs were made for people who wanted to update their web pages often and easily, so most applications are easy to use. Everyone who can handle a web browser should be able to master a weblog. In the simplest case updating the weblog means entering some text in a form displayed on a web page, pressing the submit button publishes the new story. Many applications provide multiple ways to enter text, such as web forms, e-mail, bookmarklets, XML-RPC, IM clients. The same is true for output. Additionally the typical weblog entry is relatively short - mostly only a few lines. Both features combined make it as easy as currently possible to publish a thought, encouraging people to write often and continously, maintaining communication over a long period of time.
Personalisation and identification: Weblog applications provide enough flexibility so that every team member can personalise the look of her/his weblog pages, sometimes even the behaviour. This increases the user's identification with the content and ensures continued input. Without the possibility to identify with his/her creation team members loose interest in providing their knowledge and thoughts very fast - the problem of many KM systems. The ability to use the weblog as a medium for self-expression makes it also more interesting for others and so helps to improve communication.
Automatic storage of knowledge: This leads us to the KM aspect of weblogs. Typically weblogs store soft, informal data. Examples are links, citations, articles, mails you don't want to forget - but also ideas, opinions about other's thoughts transforming into heavily-linked discussions across different web logs, which are finally leading to project decisions. This is the kind of information that often isn't included in project deliverables and therefore won't be stored in the corporate knowledge databases. But this is probably the knowledge that others are searching for when a project is finished: "Why did you choose to go this way? What alternatives did you have? ..." Without a weblog archive you will have to rely on the availability and the memory of participants.
The characteristics mentioned above show that weblog applications are very flexible tools, which can be used in many ways. Their popularity shows also that the feature set is interesting enough for many people - who never created a web page before - to actually start writing about their ideas and thoughts. With enough supporting project policies a project manager could encourage his team to actually use weblogs for the project as an asynchronous communication channel, independent of locations and time zones of the participants.
Although I emphasised here the team communication aspect, the same features can also be used to maintain the communication with project stakeholders. As a supplement or replacement for traditional reporting procedures it could provide you with a more direct communication with stakeholders. So you should include weblogs when you are thinking about your next project communication plan.
For those of you who want to give it a try I want to mention two products, which cover the functionality described - from simple communication/documentation to more advanced KM-like features. Of course, there are more, but these two I tried myself and found them quite easy to handle.
Six Apart's Moveable Type http://www.moveabletype.org is a weblog application for small teams or organisations. The application is small, installable on most web-servers and can be used with or without a database. One Moveable Type installation can provide multiple weblogs, so every team member can get his/her own and modify the look and feel, and it offers also a central administration interface. With these characteristics a team can install the weblog quickly on a standard web server and immediately start using it.
Traction Software's TeamPage Server http://www.tractionsoftware.com extends typical weblogs with features meant for use by larger organisations. The server is an all-inclusive Java package that installs very quickly on a variety of platforms. TeamPage combines the ease-of-use of a weblog with functionality to organise and analyse the stored information. It provides possibilities to tag content, even on paragraph level, with system- and user-defined labels and a good integration with the Windows platform, so that content from Windows applications (Outlook, Word, ...) can be easily transferred into the weblog. Once stored in the XML database users can search the information with a very rich search syntax that can also be used to create flexible dynamic views. Use TeamPage if you are working in an enterprise context or want to have a product that combines weblogs with portal/KM functionality.
The New Zealand Aukland University of Technology features a "Leadership Model for Innovative Organizations" called Tipu Ake. The Tipu Ake is a behavioural model based on some very old New Zealand Maori thinking that works in situations (including projects) of complexity and chaos where everything is interdependent and innovation is a requirement.
The Tipu Ake prospers in organisations that understand teamwork and more particularly the concept of shared leadership. Read application stories and download the model at http://www.tipuake.org.nz
A selection of articles, links, and sources for best-practice information. See:
http://www.cbponline.com/knowledgebank/index.htm
The Center for Business Practices Project Management KnowledgeBank has an extensive set of web links on project management and IT project management. While this "KnowledgeBank" lacks a clear PM taxonomy for the resources listed, there are useful PM articles and a general listing amongst the following categories of remote resources.
The Center for Business Practices has special MS Power Point Presentations of :
. . . according to professor Dave W. Farthing of the University of Glamorgan. Notes compiled for his students are useful for any student of PM. Of particular interest is the B.Sc Degree and MSc. "Notes on project management issues". There are brief overview notes on
Checkt out Dave Farthings Notes at:
http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/pages/staff/dwfarthi/projman.htm
Once a year, the IPMA International Advanced Courses in Project Management take place. These three days' courses are for experienced project management professionals, and are i.a. developed to address training requested by candidates for IPMA Certification at Level B and Level A.
The next bouquet of courses will take place 16th - 18th January 2003 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and includes 7 parallel course modules:
For further information please download the brochure in pdf-format from our website http://www.ipmacourse.com where you can also register for a course, or contact.
IPMA Course Committee
Saettedammen 4
DK-3400 Hilleroed
Phone: +45/ 48267075 Fax: +45/ 48240650
Email: info@ipmacourse.com
Project Management College (PM College)‚ is dedicated to providing excellence in corporate project management training and professional development. Backed by its academic partner, The Heinz School at Carnegie Mellon University, PM College offers superior course content and realistic educational approaches to create behavior change essential for project management success.
Students can earn a Master’s Certificate in Project Management or a specialized IT Project Management Master’s Certificate awarded by the PM College and endorsed by The Heinz School of Carnegie Mellon University. Interactive case studies, real-world current examples, and state of the art materials and knowledge transfer techniques combine to give students the classroom practice and experience they can take back and apply to their jobs.
PM College is also recognized as a global charter Registered Education Provider (REP) by the Project Management Institute (PMI®). By providing organizations with the skills needed to effectively manage programs, projects and teams, PM College training helps improve bottom line performance. For more information, visit www.pmcollege.com.
The Cheetah PMP Examination Preparation Toolkit has 29 pages of tips on how to obtain your Project Management Professional Certification. 120,000 project managers have downloaded the kit in the last year. If you are thinking about obtaining your PMP, or would like more information on how to obtain a PMP, visit the Cheetah link at http://www.cheetahlearning.com.
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You can download the PMP Exam Prep Toolkit from http://www.cheetahlearning.com