Tag: communication

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How to create a project communication plan

Woman writing a project communication plan

Creating a clear communication plan can help you effectively collaborate with your team, client, and stakeholders. Like other tools that you’ll use for the duration of a project, this plan will set straightforward guidelines that everyone will follow to stay on the same page as they work on meeting goals.

What’s a Project Communication Plan?

This plan outlines the methods that will be used to share information (think: meetings, emails, phone calls, status reports, discussion boards, etc.). And it also covers when information will be shared, who will be sharing it, and who will be receiving it. Plus, it gives everyone the opportunity to provide critical feedback that can help ensure a project’s success. Continue reading How to create a project communication plan

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Communications Management Plan in Project Management

Communication in business and in project management can be difficult, especially when you’re collaborating with virtual teams or working on global projects, but clear communication is a critical component to a project’s success.

Did you know that a project manager spends 90% of his or her time communicating? Indeed, most problems on projects relate, to some degree, to issues surrounding communications. Yet, our studies show that communication issues are the most preventable problems on projects.

What’s the secret to good communication? Communications must be planned, managed, and continuously monitored throughout the life of a project. This requires the development of a project management communication plan.

Project Management Communications Plan

  1. What is a Project Management Communications Plan?
  2. Create a Project Management Communications Plan
  3. Ideas to Consider in Your Communications Plan
  4. Set Your Plan In Motion

What Is a Project Management Communications Plan?

The Communications Plan is an easy tool to create that you can use to improve communications with everyone on your team, as well as with clients and stakeholders. It outlines the methods used to deliver important information relating to you’re working your project, from start to finish.

  • The goal of a project management communication plan is to establish guidelines that everyone who’s involved in the project will follow to share information with others.
  • A communication plan defines how often information will be shared, who will be responsible for sharing it and details on how information is to be delivered.
  • It’s best to create a new project management communications plan for each project you start. That’s because every project is unique, with its own timeline, deliverables, team, and budget, so the same communication plan won’t work on all projects.

Create a Project Management Communications Plan

A good project management communication plan, starts with stakeholder management. This includes the identification of stakeholders, their requirements and expectations.

You’ll also use the project management scope statement and the WBS (work breakdown structure) that have been created as part of the project. As you create your plan, ask questions like the following so you can move in the right direction:

  • Would it be better to communicate the information more formally in an email or a phone call?
  • Is this an issue that is best discussed in person or virtually?
  • Is the communication important enough to call a meeting, or is it fine to simply create a report?
  • How quickly and how often does the information need to be communicated?

A key aspect of planning communications is determining the optimal technology for communicating information. Agile emphasizes more face-to-face communication while more formal written communications are necessary when utilizing a predictive approach.

Ideas to Consider in Your Communication Plan

Communications should be efficient (providing only the information needed), effective (providing information in the right format at the right time) and add value to the project. When creating a project management communications plan, here are some questions to consider:

  • What needs to be communicated, and why?
  • What information do stakeholders need and when?
  • What is the best method for communicating: What reporting format does the sponsor require? What reporting format do you want from the project team? Who is responsible for sending information? You’ll also want to consider when and how often should information be sent?
  • How will you clearly delineate project roles and responsibilities?
  • What methods should the team use to bring problems or issues to your attention?
  • Where does the project fit into the organizational initiatives, portfolio, and programs?
  • How to communicate changes
  • How will factors such as location, culture, security, privacy, and language impact project communications?

Consider project risks, status, the project charter, stakeholder expectations, the project management plan, and WBS. And don’t forget to also consider problems, changes, and updates to components of the project management plan, as well as upcoming work and delays.

Set Your Plan in Motion

Remember that, in project management, good communication must be planned into the project and managed throughout. The methods and frequency of communication must meet the needs of your stakeholders.

In the end, what your plan looks like will depend on the needs of the project itself, as well as the people involved. Writing down your project management communications plan is wise, it can serve as a valuable reference throughout your project. The best part is that it doesn’t need to be too formal either, yet it will certainly help you and your team succeed.

All of these elements can be found in much more detail in Rita Mulcahy’s PMP® Exam Prep book, so definitely check it out if you want to learn more.

Sources:
A white paper by RMC Learning Solutions, “6 Essential Elements to Effective Project Management.”
https://www.teamgantt.com/blog/project-management-communication-plan

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Six Tips for Planning Your Project Communications

Two coworkers planning their project communications plan on their computer

Having a well-thought-out and documented plan at the beginning of a project is important. The plan can often mean the difference between success and failure. As a project manager, you need to care about project communication. Too often project managers (PMs) approach their projects without planning communications. They may focus all their efforts on issuing status reports. Status reports are important. Unfortunately, all they do is describe where your project currently stands. Status reports don’t address the communication needs of the project from beginning to end. Given how crucial communication is to the project and project team, a failure to plan can lead to misunderstandings, rework, and other problems.

Planning communication on the project doesn’t have to be elaborate, but it does require some thought. You need to consider all the exchanges of information required of you and everyone involved on the project. Doing so will keep the project deadline on track. A plan can help you prepare for any obstacles the project encounters along the way. Such planning will guide you and the team in creating information that is clear and understandable. It will help you reach the right people and allow stakeholders to act when necessary.  Here are six ways to consider as you plan your project.

Six Communication Planning Tips

  1. Think How to Communicate: Think through the different types and methods available.  Make sure you choose the best approach for each item that needs to be communicated. Information can be communicated in different ways—formally or informally, written or verbal—and through a variety of methods. It’s important to consider what approach to use for the different information exchange needs of the project.
  1. Analyze Stakeholders’ Communication Requirement: Keep in mind the phrase “to each their own.” Ask your stakeholders how they prefer to give and receive information. Try to follow their preferences within reason. As the PM, you will likely need to communicate to individuals on your team using several different methods. Although this may mean extra work, it can be worth the effort if it prevents problems. Miscommunication can be avoided by asking a simple question like, “How would you like me to pass this information to you?”
  1. Consider the Company Culture and Existing Systems: You also need to take the company’s culture and expectations into consideration when planning project communications. If people in the organization are resistant to technology, for example, that will impact your thinking about what types of tools or software to include on the project. Similarly, the company may already have existing systems and programs in place. You’ll want to make use of for communicating.
  1. Refer to Lessons Learned from Past Projects: There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, draw on existing procedures, issues, and lessons learned from past projects. Assessments of what has and has not worked in the past can be a great help for planning.
  1. Take Advantage of Available Technology: Modern collaboration tools such as Trello and others can help keep project communication and the team organized. Such tools help the team track progress on deliverables. They allow the team to communicate about the schedule and other project concerns. These might document deadlines, ownership of tasks, updates, and the time required to complete tasks.
  1. Follow the Plan: Make sure everyone knows about the plan and how important it is to the project. Then, follow the plan in your own approach. Constantly refer the team back to the plan until the habit becomes ingrained.

RMC is Here to Help

You can’t plan for everything, and many unique situations will surface throughout your projects that you may not have anticipated. But planning and documenting in advance how you’ll communicate on a project—including how you’ll communicate around these unexpected situations—will help your projects run more smoothly.  Whether you are a new or experienced project manager, project communications can be a struggle.   If these tips aren’t enough, check out RMC’s Project Communication and Stakeholder Engagement eLearning course.

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5 Reasons to Care About Project Communication

Project manager in communication with team

A great deal of a project manager’s time is spent communicating with management, the team, the customer, and other stakeholders.  It is no surprise that project managers often identify communication-related issues as the #1 problem they experience most frequently on projects. According to the Project Management Institute, 40 percent of all project failures can be directly attributed to lack of effective communication.

Poor communication examples during projects are endless, yet many people allocate time developing technical project management skills while ignoring softer skills like communication and active listening.  Making even a small changes in your project communication habits can greatly impact your project’s success.  Ask yourself: “Is there a benefit to not communicating effectively?”

5 Reasons for Effective Project Communication

  1. Engaged Stakeholders
  2. Risk Mitigation
  3. Organizational Benefits
  4. Knowledge Sharing
  5. Self-Motivation

Here are additional reasons to care about project communication:

1. Engaged Stakeholders

As a project manager, you need to use communication skills in every aspect of your job, from refereeing conflicts between team members to emailing project status updates to stakeholders. To do this, you need to enhance your communication skills.  If you don’t, your stakeholders could experience poor team relationships, receive too little relevant information about the project, and could become disengaged from it. The easiest way to maintain engagement with your stakeholders is to take the time to plan how you will communicate with them early in the project and follow through with it.

2. Risk Mitigation

One of the biggest benefits to investing in your project communication skills is the ease in which you will be able to collect information on possible risks to your project. All of the methods we suggest identifying risks involve high-quality communication. Being able to facilitate a brainstorming meeting is an art and a science. Knowing exactly how long to use silence before someone is so uncomfortable, they volunteer a suggestion is a golden moment in effective listening. Maintaining energy and enthusiasm with your project team while identifying risk categories and completing an affinity diagram to organize ideas.  It is a skill that isn’t going to come naturally to everyone, but when practiced it becomes second nature. Given the alternative of missing a potential risk that could be costly, it seems obvious that for this reason alone you should care about increasing your communications competence.

3. Organizational Benefits

Simple changes can make a big difference in improving project communications. Imagine a project where you’ve drafted a comprehensive communications management plan and followed it.  Where you’ve continuously updated your stakeholder register, and because of it, stayed on top of requirement changes. Where barriers to communication were reduced to the point where no time was lost because everyone was aware of the project’s progress.  This would get noticed. A project brought in on time, within budget, and meeting the needs of the organization will catch the executive team’s eye.

It doesn’t have to be difficult. Ultimately the investment in effective communications will result in benefits to the entire organization.   Conflicts will be reduced; employee satisfaction will increase resulting in reduced turnover and fewer requirements will be missed.

4. Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge Sharing is a key component of agile methods; this is an important concept to consider when managing project communications. Information (i.e., knowledge) is a basic component of any project, so it must be distributed and shared. Properly sharing knowledge allows for more information to be provided until team members have enough knowledge to complete their work.  A project management communication plan is a tool to determine how information is shared and delivered to everyone.

Agile projects embrace knowledge sharing using tools such as daily stand-ups, Kanban boards, and wireframes all support knowledge sharing by ensuring the project information is available.

5. Self-Motivation

Enhanced communication skills are transferable to any project in any industry. Your ability to effectively listen, to ask clarifying questions, and to craft professional formal and informal correspondence have practical applications.

Project management is about coordinating efforts, gathering information, and sharing knowledge to achieve the project goals.  To increase your communication skills, consider RMC’s updated Project Communication and Stakeholder Engagement eLearning course.

Sources:

https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/effective-communication-better-project-management-6480