Project Management in most organizations is focused internally. No matter how many team members are involved in a project, these players are generally known to the project manager and the organization’s leadership. However, can and should project management focus externally and become social — even viral?

It’s common these days for people to share ideas publicly by joining online social networks such as LinkedIn, gaining followers through Twitter, and sharing their ideas publicly. The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, recently stated that if he had started Facebook today, sharing information with the everyone — as opposed to just friends — would have been his starting point. Understandably, however, project management remains private. Should it be possible, however, to have a project be viewed by thousands of people around the world, just as a YouTube video can? Project Bubble is a new web application that allows organizations and individuals to manage and share their projects within a team. It’s an easy-to-use, Web-based tool similar to Basecamp. I’m fortunate enough to have the opportunity to build social functionality into Project Bubble, so I’m now looking at the possible merits of doing so — and thought you might want to weigh in.

Let’s imagine a scenario. You are a project manager in a NGO and you’re responsible for getting a team together for a building project in Africa. You have a project set up with different tasks and you have a public page set up for people to view all of this information. What the project lacks, however, is people.

Project management software like Project Bubble could enable this kind of social collaboration. I’m envisioning a public page for the project that has ‘Join Project’ and ‘Donate’ buttons that allow people to get involved collaboratively or financially. It could also feature social widgets that allow people to add the project to Delicious, Digg, or Re-Tweet to their followers. Soon, the project manager could have lots of relevant, interested people contributing to their project.

There are plenty of other such scenarios. Do you have one — for profit, or non-profit — that you think social project management would enhance? I’d love any feedback you have about this idea.