More than any other group of executives, project managers are susceptible to using “what's hot.” The sheer challenge of managing a project creates the need to find the latest thing to help get the job done. Today, the hottest thing going is the Internet. So it's no surprise that a lot of managers are using the Internet.
But experienced managers know that any new technology has risks and that using the Internet just because everyone else is may create more problems than it solves. They also know that the Internet is fundamentally just another communication tool available to help them run their project, but one more powerful than they've ever had before.
Since the 1960s, when Pentagon scientists developed the Internet as a decentralized network for exchanging defense information, it has grown phenomenally—and it's still growing. Sources as diverse as Fortune and Information Week have reported that the Net now connects more than 56 million people on five million host computer systems in over 150 countries; and that, with a growth rate estimated at 100 percent per year, it may serve as many as 700 million people by the year 2000.
The emergence of the World Wide Web in 1993 made the Internet easier to use by replacing long, difficult command-line entries with a graphical interface. This made Internet navigation as easy as clicking a mouse.
Use It Right or Lose Your Edge. In a December 1995 interview, Internet consultant Barry Hassler of Hassler Communications System Technologies in Dayton, Ohio, compared the current situation on the Internet to the early days of TV and radio. The early-users who used it right—like the major TV networks—succeeded.
So what is the “right use” of the Internet? “It really depends on the individual company and what they're trying to accomplish,” said Hassler. “[The Internet] is not for everyone.” However, Hassler added technological companies and companies that deal with technical people are going to be left behind if they don't use the Internet. He lists three basic ways the Internet can help a business: promotion, providing information, and sales.
Promotion involves creating name recognition by establishing and maintaining a presence on the Internet. Providing information means offering online the same materials a company or project would normally provide in printed form, like annual reports and marketing pamphlets.. Transactional use is sending and receiving information and in some cases directly selling goods and services. “Online commerce (selling products) and financial transactions (transferring cash between bank accounts) are coming on now,” Hassler said.
Two Real-Life Examples. The Dayton Airshow began using the Internet in 1995. The Airshow, held each July, is among the largest of the 400 airshows in North America. In even-numbered years, the Airshow also hosts an aerospace trade show.
“We realized we probably ought to be into electronic marketing because that's our market—electronic technology,” said Marketing Consultant Dennis Nickell of Nickell & Associates International. “So many members of the aerospace industry are online.”
When Nickell saw an Internet home page at a conference he thought it would be a smart idea for the Dayton Airshow to have one of its own. Dennis hired a developer to create the Airshow home page, which went online July 3, 1995. The site promoted the Dayton Airshow as one of the world's largest and provided information on dates and major acts. For the first few weeks it got over 50 visits per day (called “hits”) from around the world. “From my perspective, it's a really great marketing and communication tool,” Nickell said. “It's a small amount of dollars compared to traditional marketing.”
Estimates of development costs for a home page range from a few hundred dollars to $20,000, according to Information Week. “For ten pages of text and graphics you're looking at $350,” said Hassler. “The higher costs relate to pulling information together from within different parts of the company.”
Maintenance costs vary. Software programs monitor the “hits” and keep detailed statistics of network demographics like where the “hits” came from and when they occurred. Hassler charges $50 to $100 per month to maintain an Internet site on the World Wide Web.
Future plans for the Airshow's Internet site include online registration for the trade show, whereby exhibitors will be able to download a registration packet directly from the Internet. They'll be able to register online and also to view a diagram showing their location in the exhibit area.
“It'll make it easier for the customer to buy,” Nickell said. “In the past, a customer would read the ad, send me a response card, I'd send him the registration package, and one month later, I'd get his response. On the Web, in minutes, hours at most, I can respond.”
The Airshow is putting its Internet address on all of its printed marketing materials. “You can get a ton more information onto the Internet than you can on a traditional half-page ad,” Nickell said. “It doesn't replace traditional advertising, it allows us to enhance it.”
Using Feedback. The Dayton Airshow staff found the AIRSHOWS! Forum (a site where users enter comments on a specific subject) on America On Line to be a good place to exchange information about what people did and didn't like when attending an airshow. Users commented about the trouble they had getting in and out of an airshow; long lines were a common problem, especially when leaving.
“We realized this was important,” Nickell said. Based on feedback from the Internet, the Airshow recruited a volunteer who was a traffic engineer. She reviewed the existing traffic patterns, took aerial photos of the parking area, then analyzed and revised the entire traffic plan. Then the Airshow set up counters to measure the number of cars entering and exiting the parking area. The new plan succeeded in moving people into and out of the Dayton Airshow more quickly.
No matter what the source, feedback can be used to improve a project. But with the Internet, feedback can be shared with more people than just the sender and the receiver. This is an important distinction for projects, because politics can sometimes be more important than performance in project management. This is especially true when “telling the project story,” as noted in “Politics and Project Performance” in the November 1995 issue of PM Network.
This aspect of Internet use is vividly illlustrated by Intel Corp.'s experience with the Pentium processor. The processor had a defect that caused a small error in some advanced calculations. The odds of the error occurring were astronomically small but those most affected were advanced users (the flaw was discovered by a college professor). When these advanced users discovered the problem, they notified each other via the Internet.
When Intel notified the users that it planned to take no action to correct the problem, word quickly spread over the Internet. Those advanced users had been connected since the earliest days of networking and they posted their findings and opinions of Intel on the Internet. Their outrage was large enough to be picked up by the national media, creating a major public-relations problem (see, for example, “A Lesson for Intel,” December 12, 1994, Newsweek, p. 58). In a matter of days Intel quickly changed its mind and agreed to replace all defective Pentium processors at its own expense.
Proceed with Caution. The Internet's interactive nature provides new ways for project managers to send and receive information. That also means that multiple parties can communicate with and about a project—parties that may include competitors, the media, and politicians, some of whom may be against a project or its sponsor.
As a management tool, the Internet should still be subject to the same cost/benefit analysis applied to any other part of a project. However, as with most promotional and informational tools, some of the benefits may be intangible. It's easy to count the number of “hits” on a home page, but it's hard to measure how much a home page has increased the public awareness of your product.
The Internet may be the “hot thing” right now, but it's no fad. It's here to stay. Used correctly, it can make your project well-known and successful. Used incorrectly, it can end it.
John Sullivan, PMP, is a member of the Southwest Ohio PMI Chapter and is a senior project Planner for Northrop Grumman Corporation in Dayton, Ohio.
Dave Yosua, PMP, is a member of the Southwest Ohio PMI Chapter and is a project manager for EG&G Mound Applied Technologies in Miamisburg, Ohio.