Engaging Project Stakeholders with Social Media

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Josh Nankivel on February 9, 2012 at 12:14pm

Personally, I don't count Instant Messaging, Blogs, Wikis, or Screen Sharing via WebEx, etc. as 'social media' -- but I know some have a different definition. I see "New Media" as encompassing all these plus social media.  Social media being the Facebook-like sites (internal and external) and Twitter/Yammer tools.

You may want to get in contact with Hal Macomber or other Yammer users. Personally, I haven't found any benefit from social media (as I've defined it above) in my own projects.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ori Hoffer on February 9, 2012 at 1:34pm

Josh - I'd beg to differ. In your own article - http://www.govloop.com/profiles/blogs/blame-failure-on-your-project... - you write about the need to keep stakeholders constantly in the loop, and clear on the project. Seems like a social tool like Salesforce Chatter or Yammer would do just that, plus it provides documentation of the discussion.

And I would totally put blogs & wikis in the social category - any time groups of people can contribute to  (via comments or updates) and share a piece of content, in my view it's become social.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Travis K. Anderson on February 9, 2012 at 11:00pm

I used SharePoint and SharePoint Designer to create a bid and proposal pipeline analysis workflow system. We were able to integrate SharePoint with MS Excel. Access, and Info Path using data from our opportunities database. After quering the primary CRM database we would store the data in MS Excel in a static location. Then auto linked to the MS Excel file as a table within MS Access. MS Access was need to determine the organizational decision level which was based on several criteria like RFP value, fee %, CONUS/OCONUS, etc. The MS Access was auto linked to the SharePoint site where we could display the data in a library. Also using MS Info Path we could link to library fields to produce a Bid-NoBid decision form that was progressed through our BD lifecycle via a creative SharePoint workflow built in SharePoint Designer.

Our stakeholders ranged from the BU manager down to the individual BD POCs. Our pipeline was over $6 billion in allocated value. We figured moving to a social media based system saved two FTE of administrative effort vs. the old powerpoint method.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Naveen Krishnamurthy on February 10, 2012 at 9:53am

We have issued yammer for internal communication on project teams to allow for more immediate collaboration versus the extra time needed to setup phone calls and meetings.  We have found it helps to resolve potential issues sooner and also has been a great tool for virtual teams.

We have also used collaborate wikis to promote discussion on items where stakeholder input is needed to weigh in to help solidify requirements and resolve uncertainties.  We have found the add'l benefit being that the stakeholders are more bought into the process/solution.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by GovLoop on February 10, 2012 at 10:08am

So on the GovLoop team, we use social media for our projects in a couple ways

We actually use a private group on GovLoop to talk to the GovLoop team.  So for example when working on our Next Generation Summit or new android app, we'll often talk about it at our weekly meeting but also have a discussion thread open before/after to share other ideas (not everyone wants to talk at a meeting)

I think communications is the biggest issue with most projects so social media is a great way to put out even more information and get quick feedback.

I also ping people on Twitter & GovLoop when looking for people to quickly look at a demo project (like an alpha project)

• ▶ Reply