Logistics
Chapter 5 Social Media and-Communication-Tools
1. Social media is a fairly new communication tool in the history of business. For people who grew up with Facebook, Twitter and other forms of talking to people electronically understanding how to use social media as a communication tool for a project is easier than for older people on a team. Social media seems like the opposite of face-to-face until a project member remembers that another person is on the other side of the message sent. Communication management boils down to make sure the right information reached the right person when they need it (Dow & Taylor, 20015). The purpose of the project was to motivate the person online in social media to rate a new shampoo. We needed to know if they liked the shampoo, why or why not they liked the shampoo and if they would use it again. Motivating a person to do something means providing someone with a motive to do what you want to do (Dow & Taylor, 2015). The idea is to “stimulate interest” in the receiver of the message so they will want to act (Dow & Taylor, 2015, p. 91). An online coupon was given as a reward if the online user filled out a short survey. The surveys that received the most response were simply worded and written in a chatty, friendly style. Benefits of using social media were the ease of producing a survey and having the data organized automatically with an online application (like Survey Monkey). Using social media was also easier than trying to organize face-to-face interviews. The main challenge was making the survey eye catching and inviting so social media users would fill it out. The users needed to persuaded to take a look at the survey and then motivated to fill it out (Dow & Taylor, 2015). .
2. A different project that did not use social media was harder to organize and reaching people to participate was more difficult. For the project we sat at a table at the entrance to a mall to gather information about how the mall was used. People were rushing in and out before we had a chance to slow them down enough to ask them any questions. The good thing about social media is that the users can be reached when they use social media on their mobile phone or personal computer. If the survey had been located on the Shopping mall’s web page, the respondents would come to the survey. We would not have to chase them down when they were rushing to do their shopping. For example going to the shopping mall’s Facebook ‘like’ page is more practical for finding respondents to a survey.
Chapter 6. Communication Tools that Manage Project Integration
1. The benefits of the kick off meeting were that I learned about past projects and communication problems Dow & Taylor, 2015). . The project manager talked about communication dos and don’ts using old projects as examples. On the other hand, the challenge from my point of view was that too much time was spent in warning about what can happen in a project. I think that the same message was possible in less time.
2. A kick-off meeting for one project seemed like a waste of time for me, because the people who needed to talk to each other were the project manager and the person in charge of ICT operation for the project. Kick-off meetings should stay short and to the point Dow & Taylor, 2015). The project manager should have arranged a private meeting with the ICT operation’s person in order to save the rest of us almost one hour. That one hour could have been spent doing our own work.
3. Meeting minutes are a good idea because future confusion can be stopped when team members can refer to their own copy. .. Some companies or teams do not want to take minutes because they do not understand that in the long run, taking minutes save time. (1) Meeting minutes do not have to write the entire stories shared in a kick-off meeting; but listing the solutions could be very helpful during the project. (2) Project managers using agile methods can use the kick-off meeting to share the vision of the project along with the objectives and goals (Dow & Taylor, 2015). A copy of the meeting’s minutes with an outline containing the objective and goals can reduce the number of questions the team members ask the project manager. Agile method uses a many meetings including short, stand-up meetings called Scrum (Dow & Taylor, 2015). The minutes may only be a few scribbled notes, but they are good for keeping track of the project’s progress. (3) Meetings can be held virtually online using applications like Skype. In modern business not all meetings are face-to-face (Dow & Taylor, 2015). Either way transcribing the minutes into an email to distribute the next day can reduce confusion (Dow & Taylor, 2015). The team members can look at their personal copy to refresh their memories.
Reference
Dow, W. & Taylor, B. ((2015). Project management communication tools. WA: Dow Publishing LLC
