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Whitepaper
Social Project Management
Every Project is a Social Network

May Schneider
--------------------------
esentri consulting GmbH
Pforzheimerstr. 132
76275 Ettlingen
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Social PM describes an advanced form of current project management, whose objec-

tive is the creation of transparency and trust, as well as effective information and
knowledge sharing within projects.
This white paper defines social project management, delimiting this from the often-used
synonym Project Management 2.0, and contains, in addition to its genesis, characteris-
tics of social project management. The primary focus lies on how Social PM meets re-
quirements from the areas of communication, collaboration and agility by using net-
work-like structures, social media, and a mix of traditional and agile methods.

By definition, project management discipline
includes the application of knowledge, meth-
odologies and tools for successful project
implementation [PMI]. At the same time, the
approach selected for the actual project im-
plementation is dependent on a number of
internal and external factors, such as corpo-
rate culture or business environment stability.
Drastic changes have taken place just in the-
se areas, however, which make a reassess-
ment of project management in its current
form necessary.
In practice, the terms Social Project Man-
agement and Project Management 2.0 are
used synonymously. The addition of 2.0
stands for the use of Web 2.0 technologies in
the form of social media. These include for
instance online platforms and applications
such as Twitter or Facebook that allow the
exchange of user-generated content, support-
ing communication within projects [BITKOM].
Social PM, however, refers to the qualities
behind the use of social media, including
communication behavior, exchange of infor-
mation or reaction times to new events.

Increasing enterprise globalization and net-
working causes an enormous surge in the
efforts required for coordination and com-
munication. At the same time, mutual
knowledge for a company’s success becomes
increasingly important, making close cooper-
ation between individual corporate members
essential. Enterprises must continually adapt
to new conditions due to rapid technological
developments and unsteady markets, and
therefore have to display a high degree of
agility to ensure successful long term posi-
tioning on the market. The trend moves to-
ward smaller, parallel running projects at
project level that additionally enhance the
previously described challenges in the areas
of communication, collaboration and agility.
In response to these developments, as well as
the resulting demands, an advanced form of
project management has emerged - Social
Project Management (Social PM).
Therefore, methodology and not technological
implementation are at the forefront of social
project management. Accordingly, Social PM
is better suited to describe current develop-
ments in project management.
But what is social project management exact-
ly? Project organization is carried out in net-
work-like structures to achieve the require-
ments in the collaboration area. These ease
the burden on the project manager, establish
trust within the project team and motivate
members to actively participate in the project.
Social media enables new forms of interac-
tion at communication level, thereby promot-
ing information flow and knowledge exchange.
Transparent projects create agility by using
current information and the resulting respon-
siveness.
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Social project management therefore repre-
sents a further development of project man-
agement, placing the collaboration of all pro-
ject members in the form of networks by
using social media in the foreground, creating
transparency and trust within projects, as
well as making effective information and
knowledge exchange possible.
In most projects, project member organiza-
tion is carried out in a hierarchical form. The
project manager is placed over the project
team in this case, constituting the sole inter-
face between the management committee
and project client. Consequently, the project
manager's primary task is to maintain the
communication flow between the individual
parties, as well as the coordination of all
groups that are involved in the project itself
(stakeholders). The efforts attributed to in-
creased communication and coordination
grows drastically through the development
towards both geographically and functionally
dispersed teams. Correspondingly, the pro-
ject manager has less time to perform other
tasks, so that overall project efficiency ulti-
mately subsides.
By contrast, the project team's task lies in the
processing of work packages assigned to the
respective members. The project structure
as well as the relationship of the individual
sub-tasks remains unknown to the team in
most cases. Consequently, it is not possible to
identify one's own contribution to the project.
Ultimately, this not only minimizes motivation,
but also team productivity.
The aim should therefore lie in the elimination
of cooperation inefficiencies in hierarchies to
quickly achieve success through the reduc-
tion of routine activities. In social project
management, every project is therefore sim-
ultaneously regarded as a social network.
This replaces the yet prevailing hierarchy by
allowing all involved parties to actually net-
work, regardless of their function or position.
The project members are actively involved in
the project from the beginning, conceiving
and processing tasks and they can report
problems and make comments. Social PM
not only allows collective work, but also collec-
tive task processing.
During social project management, the pro-
ject manager delegates a part of his respon-
sibility to the project team, therefore reducing
his administrative efforts. Despite this bot-
tom-up approach, the responsibilities remain
clearly defined as the project manager re-
tains his position within the project. He re-
mains the most important interface to the
client, he is responsible for controlling and
monitoring the project, and therefore be-
comes a central node within the network. So
project organization with Social PM bases on
lower but not on flat structures.
Communication, in addition to collaboration, is
of vital importance to a project's success.
Various studies have placed this as the most
important factor for a project's success
[GPM], [esentri].
In project work, a number of different com-
munication systems and technologies are
used for the exchange of information between
the project team, such as meetings, confer-
ence calls or e-mails. The resulting infor-
mation, based on the use of these resources,
is stored on different platforms and mediums.
In addition, handwritten documents or even
the implicit knowledge of individual project
members can be included here, next to mail
servers. Access to the information contained
within the media content is therefore only
possible for a limited group of individuals,
promoting the emergence of isolated
knowledge within projects.
Globally distributed teams also exacerbate
the conditions under which information and
knowledge exchange takes place. Project
communication is influenced primarily by dif-
fering time zones, in addition to language and
cultural barriers. Means of communication
typically used so far, such as telephone con-
ferences, have proven to be inefficient, there-
fore making the use of new forms of commu-
nication essential.
New communication forms have simultane-
ously developed within the private sector,

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such as Facebook or Twitter. These plat-
forms, defined as social media, enable the
use of communication tools such as chats
and news, as well as comment and review
functions, providing both an open and timely
exchange of information. The numbers, such
as the 600 million Facebook users achieved,
clearly speak for their success.
These success concepts are transferred to
project management in Social PM. The goal is
to optimize information flow by using social
media. A central project platform arises in
combination with the previously described
project organization as a social network. This
is the starting point for all communication
forms on one hand, additionally representing
the project knowledge base on the other,
providing access for all project members
through the network approach.
Changes to initial framework conditions and
requirements often occur during the course
of a project. For this reason, projects must
remain adaptable during their entire life cycle
to be able to react flexibly to possible devia-
tions. A prerequisite is that all project rele-
vant information is made available in a cur-
rent and correct form at any given time.
The level of information in a project is highly
dependent on the project management
methodology selected. In principle, one distin-
guishes between traditional and agile meth-
ods. Project planning as a whole is carried
out at the beginning of the life cycle in classic
project management. The agile approach,
however, focuses on project subdivision into
separate packages that are brought together
by an iterative procedure. In practice, the
agile approach is considered particularly
promising [OOSE, esentri]. This is not so
much attributable to individual process mod-
els, such as Scrum, but to the principles be-
hind agile project management.
An overriding principle of agile methods is the
creation of transparent projects. Transpar-
ency refers to both the latest information
level, as well as the information flow within the
project. For transparency realization, a mini-
mum of conclusive rules are defined in agile
project management. Problems within pro-
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jects and faults between the actual and tar-
get state can be promptly identified in combi-
nation with short work cycles.
The creation of a foundation of trust lies in
interaction with transparency. This arises
because of transparency, but is also a pre-
requisite. To promote confidence, the project
focus is deferred from the work packages to
the individual team members. This leads to
the integration of the entire team, thereby
supporting close cooperation of individual
project members.
Social PM does not rely upon a single project
management as opposed to previous project
management. Much more, a combined ap-
proach takes place: traditional and agile
methods, thus enabling the consolidation of
benefits from both methods through the
transfer of successful transparency and trust
concepts. Furthermore, this procedure con-
flates the subject areas of collaboration,
communication and agility - collaboration also
promotes trust by using network-like struc-
tures. Communication is the foundation of
information exchange and thus transparency.
The progression of project management to-
wards Social PM offers the possibility to meet
increasing demands from the fields of com-
munication, collaboration and agility. Project
collaboration is supported by motivation and
trust using network-like structures. The use of
social media will also facilitate communication
within projects, simultaneously generating the
basis for transparent projects. Project agility
is ultimately promoted through the combina-
tion of agile and traditional methods, as well
as the conflation of the three requirement
areas in light of transparency and trust.
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that optimize cooperation within organiza-

tions. Through the close integration of tech-
nology and methodology, our customers ben-
efit from professional and agile project meth-
ods, as well as our enormous innovative pow-
er.

esentri developed a "Software as a Service"

solution for the "Social PM" concept present-
ed here, which for the first time places effec-
tive communication and task coordination at
the heart of project management, thereby
promoting successful project implementation.
The result is a sustainable improvement in
project objective achievement, thus present-
ing a new standard in project management. A
prestigious jury at the Karlsruhe Technology
Region Cyber Champion Award 2010 hon-
ored this concept.
At esentri, we have the task of facilitating our
customers’ visions of simple access (easy
entry) to the most modern technologies and
innovative concepts. For this purpose, we
specialize in consulting, implementation and
the optimization of integrated social enter-
prise solutions. The focus lies on solutions
with service-oriented architectures (SOA)
from our technology partners at Oracle, and
sophisticated Rich Internet Applications (RIA)

www.esentri.com
www.social-pm.com
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www.twitter.com/esentri

oose Project Management Survey

www.oose.de/projektmanagagement/pm-studie.html

bitkom Social Media Guide

http://www.bitkom.org/