Other Planning - Communications Planning

Communication Planning

• Good communication is key to project success
• A project manager needs to constantly communicate project related information to stakeholder
• Need to determine
• WHAT to communicate
• TO WHOM to communicate
• HOW to communicate
• WHY or purpose

Why plan communication?

• To ensure communication occurs and that it occurs when needed
• To share information consistently with:
• Team members
• Team sponsors
• Stakeholders
• Vendors
• Other people affected by the project

Communicating in various situations

• Personality conflicts
• Project behind schedule
• Organizational changes
• Successful completion of a milestone
• Departure of team member
• Main vendor unresponsive
• Budget cuts and resulting changes

Formal and informal methods

• Formal
• Team meetings
• Reports – important for documenting legal and other crucial information
• Presentations – Suitable for giving a good summary (usually to management
• Informal
• Email – quickly to large group of people

Verbal and non-verbal methods

• Verbal (Presentation, meeting)
• Pro: Verbal communications are very important for many people who prefer to communicate verbally and ask specific questions rather than read information.
• Con: takes up more time and effort to gather everyone
• Non-verbal (email)
• Pro: Electronic communications are often useful when it is important to send information quickly to a large group of people
• Con: Less interactive
• Non-verbal (formal report)
• Formal written communications are important for documenting legal and other crucial information

Reports

• Range from of detailed to executive overviews
• Created from information found in the following:
• Gantt chart (tasks, milestones, schedule)
• Expense spreadsheet or database
• Budget information
• Meeting minutes

Source: PMP, Prince2