Are you a "#PMOT"?

In honor of this year's International Project Management Day the team at Apptivo put together a list of the best Project Management resources on twitter and we were ecstatic to find our @Project_world twitter amongst those mentioned!

Check out the full list here:

Top 20 Project Management Experts On Twitter

View more presentations from Puneet Yamparala

Are you on twitter, or do you look to twitter for Project Management information? Who are your "must follow" #PMOTs or BAOTs (Project Manager on Twitter or Business Analyst on Twitter in case you were wondering).

Friday Flicks: Three Project Management Videos

This week I came across a number of interesting videos on the Project World twitter account. Here they are in case you missed it.

First, I found this video about the program that Disney Institute offers.

Disney Institute will be presenting "The "Magic" Behind Great Teamwork: Disney's Approach to People Management" on Monday, November 14th at Project World.

Next, check out this new program "RedCritter Tracker."

RedCritter Tracker - Agile Gamification from Mike Beaty on Vimeo.

We've been discussing the influence of social media on project management software recently and this software takes that to a new level with Foursquare-style badges and a rewards store. What do you think, would you ever use a program like this? (If so, check out our track on "The New Era of Social Communication, Leadership & Collaboration.")

I also came across this video of PW&WCBA keynote speaker Carlos Dominguez, Senior Vice-President, Office of the Chairman and CEO, Cisco discussing collaboration tools and Cisco technology.



Like this content? Follow us on twitter for more or register for the 2011 Project World & World Congress for Business Analysts event. Receive an exclusive 15% discount off the standard registration rate as a reader of our blog with code PW11BLOG.

Project Management Software Embracing Social?

In the last issue of ProjectNews, our post visited on the ways in which a successful project manager communicates with their team. Do you email, text, or call? Do you prefer in person meetings? Do you rely on a project management software to document communication and tasks?

I put the question to our LinkedIn group and also posted on Quora to get some more opinions on the subject. Many who weighed in agreed that their is a certain level (over three emails?) where in-person or phone communication is necessary. However, there is also the sentiment that written communication using email or a portal provides back-up documentation of the process, tasks assigned and decisions made.

With this in mind, I was interested to read about the recent integration of CA Technologies Inc.’s project and portfolio management (PPM) software with Salesforce.com’s Chatter collaboration tool.

As reported in IT World Canada, this integration may help with the adoption levels of PPM software, and allow more stakeholders to view project progress. Ken Jochims, senior product marketing manager for PPM software at CA Technologies reasoned that "the integration means non-PPM users, such as stakeholders who are not part of the project team, can also monitor the project’s progression." Brian Bell, CA's general manager of service and portfolio management was quoted in this piece on enterprise APPS today as saying "Integrating Chatter with our PPM solution helps manage collaboration across the innovation life-cycle."

Similarly, this article in The Brainyard explored the evolution of Liquid Planner 3.0 and Mendix's Sprintr specifically and the rise of social streams as part of project management software in general.

Regarding Sprintr, a tool built around agile development concepts, the following feature sounds particularly useful "More specific modules like a tool for creating project "stories" (a technique for gathering requirements) also have a wall-like feel to them, including the ability to make comments on stories and sub-stories." Sprintr is currently only available in private beta, but it will be interesting to see the tool on its full launch.

Are you using any sort of social-style tools to manage projects? Do you find traditional project management tools to clunky for agile projects? Share with us in the comments, or go social and join the discussion on our LinkedIn group or twitter @Project_World.

If you're interested in learning more about social-style collaboration for project management, consider checking out our track on "The New Era of Social Communication,
Leadership & Collaboration" at this fall's PWWCBA conference. To learn more about this track, and the conference, download the brochure. Save 15% off the standard registration rate as a reader of our blog with code PW11BLOG.

Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA with a specialization in marketing. She may be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com.

Put Social At the Core of Your B2B Business: Process, Operations, Analysis

In association with Marketo's Revenue Masters Webinar Series, The Institute for International Research invites you to join us for a complimentary web seminar.

The Social Business AGENDA:
Tackling the Top 2011 Trends for Competitiveness
Sandy Carter, Vice President,
IBM Social Businesses and Collaboration Solution Sales and Evangelism, IBM

Thursday, April 28th, 2011 1:00 - 1:45 PM EDT

Reserve your Webinar seat now, register here.

Social Media has come a long way from the early days of Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. With over 574 million people worldwide on Facebook, 106 million with Twitter accounts, and over 2 billion YouTube videos, how do you leverage this power and stay ahead of your competition?

You need to create a bold social media AGENDA for your business.

Hear from Sandy Carter, Vice President, IBM Social Businesses and Collaboration Solution Sales and Evangelism, on how to create a Social Business AGENDA. Using many case study examples, Ms. Carter will show how to build an AGENDA that aligns organizational goals while driving experiences and engagements through your business processes, utilizing crowdsourcing, communities, disaster recovery and analytics to leverage Social Business for greater results in 2011.

Learn how to:
A - Align Organizational Goals & Culture
G - Gain "Friends" Through Social Trust
E - Engage through Experiences
N - Network Your Business Processes
D - Design for Reputation and Risk Management
A - Analyze Your Data

Plus, attend for a chance to win 1 of 2 copies of Sandy Carter's acclaimed book, The New Language of Marketing 2.0: How to Use ANGELS to Energize Your Market

This web seminar is sponsored by:





Title: The Social Business AGENDA: Tackling the Top 2011 Trends for Competitiveness
Date: Thursday, April 28th, 2011
Time: 1:00 - 1:45 PM EDT

Register Now. After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

A Place for Face-To-Face Meetings?

Last week I was thinking about computing in the cloud, and even today I was pulling files off of Basecamp for another project. However, being in the events business, buzz on The Harvard Business Review and The Economist blogs about the value of face to face meetings definitely pulled me back down to earth.

When you're managing a project, how important do you feel face to face meetings are? Additionally, where do you place the value of networking events and conferences in contrast to online networking or webinars?

On The Harvard Business Review blog, Stephen Greer writes

"The most important aspect of these meetings is that they weren't blaming sessions. We shared successes and best practices — and learned from challenges."

To me, that is often the value of attending conferences, the opportunity to be inspired by thought leaders and peers, and also to share best practices and experiences. You might learn as much or more sharing "war stories" (and successes!) during a networking event or over coffee between sessions as you do during the sessions themselves. Similarly, inspiration may strike or your team may gel during the down time of a face to face meeting in a way that just isn't possible during a con call or by email.

Where do you stand? Would you just as soon save the networking for twitter? Or are you looking for some face time?

Use social media to help manage your projects

In a recent article at Untitled1, they look at ways social media can enhance your project management tool set. You can use blogs for project status updates, wikis to help centralize your information, and for larger projects, you can set up online communities. These tools shouldn't replace what you already have, they should enhance the tools you're already using.

Do you use any of these tools when you are managing a project? What benefits have you seen?