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118 • Green Project Management

achieving the anticipated benefits and exactly what are those benefits. It
also gives the team and the project sponsor information that will help to
fine-tune the greenality of the project processes to gain maximum value
for the efforts.
The nature of the status and progress information and the point in the
project’s life cycle will determine the frequency of the information dis-
tribution. Early in the planning phase of a project and early in the imple-
mentation phase of a project more frequent interaction may be required
than in later stages of those phases as the planning effort stabilizes and
the implementation efforts stabilize. Each project will be different in the
frequency of information distribution, but they will all need status and
progress information and a communications plan that accounts for all the
variables. Because the project progress greenality report (PPGR) is a new
reporting mechanism and greenality is a new reporting subject, we rec-
ommend that it be done frequently, at least once every two weeks.

using soCial media to green
CommuniCations
One of the fastest-growing and best ways to maintain a “team” flavor to
your project—even if the team is geographically dispersed—is social net-
working. How does social networking help a project manager add greenal-
ity to the project? For that answer, we’ll look briefly at a few of the more
popular general, business-specific, project management–specific, and
green project management–specific sites.
Sharing video is one popular means of social networking, and the most
popular site by far on which to post videos is YouTube. There are sev-
eral ways to use this video site to enhance project communications. One
way is to use videos of the project to track its progress. If it happens to
be a construction project, it would be appropriate to post a video as the
major milestones are achieved, the foundation completion as an example.
If a picture’s worth a thousand words, then a video is worth an order of
magnitude more. It will not only keep stakeholders informed, but save an
untold number of resource hours having to use traditional communica-
tion methods, as well as using a free electronic medium to save financial
resources. With a YouTube video, while there is some time used to pre-
pare the message, the total time to prepare and deliver the message will be