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Reputation tools, therefore, may not be ready just yet for use as practical tools within a corporation. The corporation and project leads must be able to set the policy and criteria for these reputation evaluations, since score cards are good but not as a means of settling personal disputes and grudges. It is not clear that corporate policies can be applied to this crop of reputation products, but no doubt, they will be available in the next generation.

Internet bidding technologies can also be adapted for telecom supply chains. We all know too well what a nightmare the Request for Proposal (RFP) and response has become. Instead, consider putting projects out to bid on a closed (or even open) supply chain network. Scoring can be a combination of price for each requirement feature, the completeness of coverage of features, and the scores pulled from the reputation networks. Like an eBay buyer, you can see the bidders that struggle to deliver, or those whose scores indicate a propensity to be late and over budget. We can all see the value of this, but actually establishing such supply chain networks will be a trans-organizational challenge - Perhaps another task for the TMF Supply Chain group.

This approach can, however, be used internally with immediate results. We talked about replacing departments with a pool of labor. Add to this the internal selling of projects and the bidding for manpower and resources. Using eBay-like technology, project organizers will offer their projects for sale to the team members who will bid to join; or team organizers could bid for star resources. Internal “funny money” (as well as budget $) can be used to allocate resources. Funny money could be credits gained for successful completions of projects on time, in budget. By doing well, you gain points that allow you to bid for membership in interesting, high profile teams. Reputation networks help judge these bids. This would be a better way to allocate resources to projects and tasks.

Putting it all together

Each of these technologies can be applied individually to improve communication in projects and enhance probability of success. It is hard to imagine a complete reengineering of projects to make use of all of these tools at once. However, we propose this aggregation of management approaches and technologies to achieve some real synergies, a collection we choose to call Project Management 2.0.

• Roll up from small groups to big groups to establish a vertically and horizontally nested organization.

Drive lateral communication via social networks and self expression via blogs. Integrate everything within a collaborative workspace. Apply these techniques both at large and in small to establish a fractal organization. This should get more projects launched and completed with a greater likelihood of success. But why stop at development projects? Project Management 2.0 (PM 2.0) is not just about development projects. It can be used for operational projects as well (yes, imagine the possibilities if Operations were to be viewed more like a series of projects…). By setting and applying consistent evaluation policies, Reputation Networks and Collaboration Spaces could be used to identify groups that are performing well, and those that aren’t and why. Productivity would be enhanced as team members strive to achieve positive Reputation scores. Some operational processes that could be improved by applying PM 2.0 include: Provisioning Assurance (Revenue and Service) Contact Centers Sales Insert your favorite here… And we need not stop at operational processes either. PM 2.0 can be applied throughout the Product Life Cycle. Fuse W2W project facilitation technology to the project’s output “product” for complete life-cycle monitoring. The users of the product become a social network that feeds back information on: Why they use it. How they use it. How well it works. When and where problems occur. What enhancements they would like. article page | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |