The Line Between Project Management and Collaboration Technology

Is there a line between Project Management tools and systems and your collaboration platforms? When I worked as a technical project manager in the 1990’s and grew into roles where I built out and managed project and portfolio management systems, these tools were often separate platforms, and outside of the scope of our intranets and document collaboration tools. In fact, I spent a good portion of my time integrating data between PM and collaboration systems, helping clients create dashboards and query insights. Since that era, more and more collaboration platforms have evolved to include advanced PM capabilities, and likewise, some of those PM line of business systems have added document and social collaboration capabilities. In fact, in many organizations, there is one system that handles all of this, and more.

In this month’s CollabTalk tweetjam, we will be discussing “The Blurred Line Between Project Management and Collaboration” and listening to experts within the community share their experiences and insights on the topic. Join us on Tuesday, January 30th at 8am Pacific via Twitter and the #CollabTalk hashtag, or use the dedicated tweetjam platform at http://twubs.com/CollabTalk to participate in the dialog. Come participate with our amazing panel, and join in on yet another great online discussion!

These online discussions are open to anyone — you do not have to be on the panel to participate. This month’s tweetjam is being sponsored by KanBo and tyGraph.

If you have never participated in one of these tweetjams, it’s pretty simple: anyone can jump in and share their thoughts, or just lurk in the wings and absorb the wisdom of the crowd. Either way, it’ll be a TON of content to consume in a single hour. You can follow the live session using the Twitter UI of your choice (Twitter.com, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Twubs, whatever). How it works is that I’ll post a series of questions every few minutes, and people will respond to Q1, Q2, Q3 and so forth with A1, A2, A3, always including the #CollabTalk hashtag with their answers. Feel free to reply as often (or as little) as you’d like, ask your own follow up questions, share relevant links, re-tweet others, and engage with the audience.

The questions we will discuss during this month’s tweetjam include:

1. What are the core capabilities/features needed for modern project management?
2. How does your team/organization track and measure scope, quality, time, & cost management today?
3. What is the role of collaboration (document, social, etc) within project management today?
4. Within your organization, do you maintain separate project/portfolio & collaboration solutions? Why/why not?
5. How important is project management methodology, and do your current solutions help or hinder?
6. What are the project & collaboration tools and platforms you use today, and what is missing from your solution portfolio?
7. What is the future of modern project management, and will it be tied to collaboration going forward?

As always, there will be side-questions, side-conversations, and wise-cracking throughout. This is open to the public, so please join in the discussion! The dialog is always thought-provoking and fun.

Our panel will continue to expand as we get close to the event, but here are some of the experts who have confirmed so far:

• Hal Hostetler (@TVWizard), Microsoft MVP and senior field engineer and social media coordinator for Roland, Schorr & Tower
• Treb Gatte (@tgatte), Business Solutions MVP, international speaker/man of mystery at TumbleRoad LLC
• Beau Cameron (@beau_cameron), Microsoft MVP and senior engineer at Aerie Consulting
• Oscar Garcia (@ozkary), Microsoft MVP and principal software engineer at Business Intelligence Technologies
• Mark Rackley (@mrackley), Office 365 MVP, sharePoint Hillbilly, Partner at PAIT Group
• Michal Sobotkiewicz (@michalsobot), founder and ceo of ObjectConnect and KanBo
• Heather Severino (@Hfitz11), OneNote MVP, MCT Regional Lead, MOS Master, MCP, MT and owner at TeachUTech
• Melissa Hubbard (@Melihubb), Microsoft MVP, Regional Director, PMP, and project manager at Withum
• Harjit Ghaliwal (@Hoorge), Microsoft MVP, IT Pro, technology & social media evangelist
• Alistair Pugin (@alistairpugin), SharePoint MVP and productivity evangelist at Britehouse
• Martina Grom (@magrom), co-founder of atwork.at, Office 365 MVP and Microsoft Regional Director
• Stacy Deere-Strole (@sldeere), SharePoint MVP and owner of Focal Point Solutions
• Nick Brattoli (@Byrdttoli), founder and lead consultant at Byrdttoli Enterprise Consulting
• Max Fritz (@TheCloudSherpa), identity management, Office 365, AzureAD, and SharePoint expert at Now Micro
• Joel Leichty (@joelleichty), Dynamics 365 MVP and director products and BI at SAGlobal
• Brian Culver (@SPbrianculver), SharePoint MCM and founder, president of Expert Point Solution
• Dean Swann (@sdeanswann), social collaborator, growth hacker and product manager for UnlimitedViz
• Marc Anderson (@sympmarc), SharePoint MVP and consultant at Sympraxis Consulting
• Eric Riz (@rizinsights), SharePoint MVP and ceo of Empty Cubicle
• Patrick Curran (@pcfromdc), director, federal group at Planet Technologies
• Randy Drisgill (@drisgill), SharePoint MVP and branding and design expert at Rackspace
• Max Fritz (@TheCloudSherpa), identity management, Office 365, AzureAD, and SharePoint expert at Now Micro
• Liz Sundet (@percusn), Microsoft MVP, platonic friend to ferns everywhere
• Erica Toelle (@ericatoelle), evangelist at Record Point
• Barry Jinks (@BJinks), founder and ceo at Colligo
• Katarzyna Bobrowska (@kbobrowska_), customer happiness specialist at KanBo
• Ed Senez (@edsenez), president at UnlimitedViz and TyGraph
• Paul Stork (@pstork), SharePoint MVP and MCM, owner and principal at Don’t Pa..Panic Consulting
• Juan Carlos Gonzalez Martin (@jcgm1978), SharePoint MVP, co-director of the magazine CompartiMOSS, consultant and solution architect at LKS
• Tobiasz Koprowski (@KoprowskiT), Data Platform MVP, independent consultant
• Gokan Ozcifci (@xGokan), Microsoft Regional Director, SharePoint MVP, and IT infrastructure consultant at Neoxy
• Jeff Willinger (@jwillie), Office 365 MVP and director of collaboration and social business at Rightpoint
• and your host, Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), Microsoft MVP, founder & ceo of CollabTalk LLC

If you would like to join our panel, please drop me a line. Otherwise, everyone is invited to the online discussion itself. And if you can’t make the time, keeping watching the Twitter feed for updates via my Storify page. You can also watch my Twitters via @buckleyplanet for updates. And thank you again to tyGraph for your continued support of these CollabTalk tweetjams!

If you are interested in being a sponsor of a future tweetjam, please contact me at CollabTalk.com