Mon, Mar 02, 2009
How Project Management Tools Empower Communities
#
I recently posted an
entry at the BlueOxenAssociates blog
on Obama, Wikis, and CollectiveLeadership. The crux of the post was
simple: CollectiveLeadership happens when it's clear who's in charge. (N51)
In other words, powerful communities empower their participants to
lead by giving them PermissionToParticipate. When it's clear that a
community has thought about what needs to be done and that people
within the community are doing those things, then people can have
confidence in that community's leadership. (N52)
Entangled in all of this are notions of trust and transparency. One of
the simplest ways to build trust within a group is to have
good
PersonalInformationHygiene and
even
better GroupInformationHygiene. The path to enabling good
GroupInformationHygiene is transparency. (N53)
Good ProjectManagement tools encourage good GroupInformationHygiene
via transparency. As a member of a project team, I can look at all of
the group's tasks, I can see what's been assigned, and I can know
who's following through. Moreover, others can see the same about me. (N54)
In a small team with clearly defined roles, project leaders are
supposed to be responsible for all of this. But by making these things
transparent, project leaders engender greater trust and empower the
entire team. (N55)
In a large community with no imposed authority, this is even more
critical, because there isn't anyone who has been pre-assigned with
the responsibility. One of the most powerful ways to be transparent
and empowering is by using a ProjectManagement tool to openly list
tasks, and by enabling anyone in the community to contribute to or
volunteer for tasks. (N56)
A few years ago, I had a conversation with my friend, SteveKetchpel,
about this phenomenon, and he shared a brilliant insight. He said
that most ProjectManagement tools are not useful for empowering
grassroot communities, because they assume that people who take
responsibility for a task will actually follow-through. What we
actually need are tools that encourage people to do their best to
follow through on tasks, but that also encourage others to take over
those tasks when the original volunteers don't or can't follow
through. This is simply a reality of life in grassroot communities,
and tools need to support this. (N57)
The ProjectManagement tool that comes closest to supporting this is
Chandler. Obviously, I'm
biased, but I think that Chandler does a great job of making it easy
for anyone to see and take on tasks. Ironically, one of the ways it
does this is by not having a task assignment feature. You can sign
up for a task by adding your initials to the title or description of a
task, and you can just as easily reassign tasks the same way. (N58)
/collaboration/tools |
Posted at 12:00pm
EEK Speaks
A blog about collaboration, community-building, and the various
goings-on at Blue Oxen
Associates, with occasional digressions on food and other vital
matters.
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