With such a heavy focus on technical skills in the IT world, communication skills tend to take a back seat in learning, however, quality companies and organizations are quickly learning that effective communication is just as important as any technical skills an employee might possess. For this reason, good communication is an even more essential skill for a good project manager. There will often be many different people involved during the life of a project that will not have the technical aptitude or understanding on the same level as the project manager or other team members. This can create all sorts of problems in developing the product that could have been prevented had everyone been on the same page. While it’s necessary for the project manager to be able to communicate these things clearly to the stakeholders, it is also necessary to be able to communicate the needs of the stakeholders clearly to the project team members and for the team members to communicate any needs or problems that are preventing the project from staying on track. In essence, an effective team is one where good communication is found from all members of the project. There are many areas to focus on to be a more effective in communications management. In our other blogs we will be going over plenty of tools and techniques to improve project communications as well as signs of good and bad communication, but in this blog, we will be covering communications management plans.
Every project management plan should contain its own communications plan. Since it is almost as valuable as the project management plan itself, Schwalbe suggests “the plan should, at minimum cover:
1. Stakeholder communications requirements
2. Information to be communicated, including format, content, and level of detail
3. Who will receive the information and who will produce it
4. Suggested methods or technologies for conveying the information
5. Frequency of communication
6. Escalation procedures for resolving issues
7. Revision procedures for updating the communications management plan
8. A glossary of common terminology” (Schwalbe, 2018, p. 434)
Arguably one of the most important on the list, the stakeholder communications requirements basically will list what stakeholders should receive which information. There is rarely project information that should be communicated to every single stakeholder on the project. There are all sorts of reasons for this, but one of the biggest is that it can unnecessarily waste time and money. There might be some stakeholders that, instead of receiving a summarized email, need to be informed and involved in person in the form of a meeting. At the same time, subcontractors might only need the summarized information, and bringing them in would waste time that could be spent on their other project duties. To save time down the road from any clarifying, it’s important to meet with stakeholders and discuss their involved portion of the document to make sure everyone is on the same page. Other things to note in the stakeholder requirements could be who is in charge of communicating with their assigned stakeholders and when. Below is an example of a stakeholder communications analysis.
(Schwalbe, p. 435)
As you can see in the table, every month there is a status report sent out everyone but the subcontractors that do not need the information. At the same time, there are meetings about the monthly status report that only management is involved in. Not included in the above table are how to resolve any escalating issues. This can vary from company to company and often might be longer than what would fit in a table. This should still be clear and well documented in the communications plan because escalating issues tend to be time sensitive. In an agile environment it is possible that much of the communications plan will change. As the project evolves it might be necessary for certain stakeholders to be more or less involved in certain areas of the project. Some meetings that, in the beginning of the project were only needed once a month might now be needed every two weeks and vice versa. It is important that all of these updates be well documented and confirmed with everyone involved and that everyone understands the revisions. When companies work on many projects that require somewhat complex communications plans, it is important and effective to try to stay as consistent as possible to eliminate any simple mistakes in communication. If stakeholders are used to communicating and have built up relationships with certain contacts, it’s more effective to avoid changing these relationships unless needed. This also can speed up time in creating these plans if much of the information can be carried over to the new project.
Communications are often overlooked on projects, but this can often lead to costly mistakes and setbacks. It is well worth the cost of proper training if communication skills are lacking in certain areas within the organization. As a project manager it is important to remember to make sure that every team member understands their responsibilities, the project, the stakeholders needs and that stakeholders are receiving and understanding the necessary project information clearly.
Bibliography
Schwalbe, K. (2018). Information Technology Project Management. Boston: Cengage.