I went to PMI Houston's west side meeting yesterday and sat in on a discussion about using social networking behind the firewall. Naturally, the discussion centered around using Sharepoint 2007. I've worked in organizations that have had some type of interactive forums (usually technical) and usually some type of shared employee contact and calendar functionality. In my experience, I've only used Sharepoint for it's document repository features so this discussion piqued my interest.
The presenters, Micheline Duguay and Roslyn Metchis from Obsidian, talked about how most audiences will be broken out into generic groups: baby boomers, gen x, and gen y. The general comfort level with the new tools related to gadgets and social networking varies greatly between the groups, with the people having the most knowledge using the technology the least. Gen Y, however, is most likely to jump on the bandwagon and join the social networking sites set up behind the firewall.
I'm very curious if there is a way to quantify the value of a tool like this? Facebook and Myspace can be big time wasters and I'm curious if anything similar has been found within the firewall as well. I think of the youngsters I know who are much more comfortable txting and facebooking than in a face to face meeting and wonder what the real impact of these tools really is as well as what their full potential might be.
I love the idea of having these tools in place and in most environments I can only imagine them to be a value add. However, I would like to find out how these tools really play into managing a project. How much time should be allocated in a project for blogging, for instance? Should it be considered? Does it replace other types of documentation?
I've had to crack the whip (figuratively!) on getting my developers to document, but at the same time I know the majority of them contribute regularly to online technical forums and communities. Having a nice hybrid in place to capture more of their knowledge behind the firewall seems to make a lot of sense. I can see that it would have to be carefully managed, however, to prevent too much non-relevant information from creeping into the documentation and ensure that project teams keep to the path, so to speak. Best practices for an organization would need to be in place for this type of effort over the long term.
I look forward to working with this technology as soon as I get a chance. I can see where this could be a real benefit in a technical environment!
The presenters, Micheline Duguay and Roslyn Metchis from Obsidian, talked about how most audiences will be broken out into generic groups: baby boomers, gen x, and gen y. The general comfort level with the new tools related to gadgets and social networking varies greatly between the groups, with the people having the most knowledge using the technology the least. Gen Y, however, is most likely to jump on the bandwagon and join the social networking sites set up behind the firewall.
I'm very curious if there is a way to quantify the value of a tool like this? Facebook and Myspace can be big time wasters and I'm curious if anything similar has been found within the firewall as well. I think of the youngsters I know who are much more comfortable txting and facebooking than in a face to face meeting and wonder what the real impact of these tools really is as well as what their full potential might be.
I love the idea of having these tools in place and in most environments I can only imagine them to be a value add. However, I would like to find out how these tools really play into managing a project. How much time should be allocated in a project for blogging, for instance? Should it be considered? Does it replace other types of documentation?
I've had to crack the whip (figuratively!) on getting my developers to document, but at the same time I know the majority of them contribute regularly to online technical forums and communities. Having a nice hybrid in place to capture more of their knowledge behind the firewall seems to make a lot of sense. I can see that it would have to be carefully managed, however, to prevent too much non-relevant information from creeping into the documentation and ensure that project teams keep to the path, so to speak. Best practices for an organization would need to be in place for this type of effort over the long term.
I look forward to working with this technology as soon as I get a chance. I can see where this could be a real benefit in a technical environment!
No comments:
Post a Comment