Communications are a critical outcome of every successful project and a key management project soft skills. you may not have thought of communications as a final result real project, but it is. It may not be what your client or customer places the most emphasis on, but that's because every customer and the customer will have good communication for granted.
project communications is one deliverable that you are personally responsible and is one that has a great influence on the success or failure of the project. I say this because personal experience has taught me that the best-managed projects, delivering on all their promise, on time and on budget can still get a bad reputation and be perceived as failures. The reason: the project manager did not do an adequate job of communicating project success to stakeholders.
We hope that the information and template in this section will help you choose the right information, schedule, and communication vehicles for your project.
The main elements of project communication
Who to communicate to
You could just say it important to communicate with all parts of the project and leave it at that, but this approach would guarantee failure. Each individual stakeholder has a different set of requirements for information about the project, and prefers different ways to receive their communications. It will not be possible to define a single set of communications and communication vehicles for each of the stakeholders in most projects so the best thing you can do is identify the different categories of stakeholders and define the necessary information and communication methods that best suits group.
Executive Sponsor / Business Sponsor Probably the most key customer (s) of the project communication. It's going to be worth it to define a custom set of communication for each person in this category. In general, these are busy people who do not have a lot of time to read a lot of details. Charts and graphs that tell the viewer a lot about the project at a glance will probably work best for them.
Take the time to interview them about their preferences: what they need to know, how they want to be communicated with, and how often. Keep them informed about project performance is critical because sign the check for the project (including your salary). They also need information so they can keep their peers aware of the project's performance. Remember, they are samples of your project so that they are better armed with information, the better job they can do promoting your project.
Tip: do not report a problem to without them suggest a solution. For example, if you're reporting an SPI of less than 1.0 for the 2nd week in a row, you must include a corrective action with the report.
Project Team Members This is the single most populous group in the list of interested parties. It is advisable to divide the group into subgroups according to their roles. For example you may decide to have a different set of communications for business analysts and software developers, or for electricians and plumbers on the project. This group has a different perspective on the performance of the project sponsors: the sponsor views the project as work done for them. The team member sees the project as work done by them and then reports on project performance are a reflection on them. A good report pleases everyone - project sponsors and team members. A bad report will cause the sponsor to worry but may negatively impact team morale.
clients / customers, which may be internal to organization or external to it. These people can profess any particular interest in project communications to the final product or service is delivered. You need to overcome this lack of interest and Pique their interest in the project. The more knowledgeable they are about the project progresses through its life cycle, the more likely they are to accept the products or services derived from it.
Partners These are people who are doing work that is in some way affected by the project work. You can be both working on projects that are part of a program, or your projects may simply hit one another without further integration. For example, you may be managing a software project that requires a corresponding database project - the database project team is your partner. Alternatively, you can work on a new system software system that will use an existing web portal for customer access - the portal team is your partner despite the fact that it is not performing a project.
The Community Stakeholders It is an increasingly important category of stakeholders. As more emphasis is placed on organizations ethical behavior and social responsibility, there is a growing demand for projects to be performed ethically. One of the ways this is done is by treating those who do not belong to the organization of fact or for the organization of the customer / client, as project stakeholders. The consideration of these subjects must go beyond communications, but project communications constitute an important part of your ethical dealings with them.
Project Manager Do not forget to include yourself as an interested party. His project information needs are perhaps the most important for the project. If you do not receive the information necessary to run the project, you will not be able to share with other interested parties. Your requirements result from the need to be updated on the progress of the individual activities of the project so you can keep the project plans up to date and identify preventive or corrective actions.
Project Management Office (PMO) Your PMO may have requirements for project information making it possible to identify opportunities for process improvement. Although these requirements are very similar to the needs of sponsors, clients and customers to know how the project is progressing according to plan, his attention is paid to the project processes, tools, techniques and best practices that support. Your PMO may also be tasked to report on the progress of the project for the organization. Reports that the PMO is responsible for should provide very specific requirements for the information.
what to communicate
What are the project information to communicate to a group of interested parties is inextricably linked to the information that is available for communication. After all, you can not communicate what you do not know. On the other hand, if the need for the information is real and gathering information is feasible, you should make every effort to make it available. The choice of the information to be communicated can not be made without considering the tools and techniques of the project to gather information and vice versa.
project communications is a key element of the project, but should be treated as an end result of the project. Starts with the Project Charter: does not the project charter contains requirements for the information? If so, the information and its target audience should be included in the communications management plan. The scope statement may also include requirements for project communications. The statement of work (SOW) may also have caught the requirements for project communications. When you do a project for an external customer or client the SOW is your bible and any project communications that are part of the legal contract should be specified there.
After identifying the needs already expressed in the project documentation up to date, you must solicit the needs of various groups of stakeholders. This solicitation should be done in the context of what is possible for the project to be delivered. Be prepared to meet with your sponsor to identify their needs. Be specific to the presentation: If the SPI (Schedule Performance Index) is displayed as a bar graph with a rolling six weeks counting? It should be indicated as a graphic line with the reference line of 1.0 and a rolling six months loot? You may also want to tease some sample reports to let them choose the format.
A dashboard project is an important tool to communicate the progress of the project sponsor and other executives. The dashboard is designed to show the status of the project at a glance, and can consist of SPI project, CPI (Cost Performance Index), SV (Schedule Variance), CV (cost variance), PV (Planned Value ), AC (Actual Cost), and EV (Earned Value). As a general rule, you should not mix program indicators with indicators of cost, but you can view the schedule and cost indicators in any combination your sponsor wants. It may also want to include things like the top 5 risks, the five outstanding issues, metrics on change (number of requests for changes, the accepted number, the number of rejected, total costs, etc.), and quality (number of test, the number passed, number failed, outstanding bug reports, etc.). You should try to keep your dashboard to a handful of slides and provide supporting details in text or Excel format as backup.
You should repeat the requirements gathering exercise with each group of stakeholders, weigh their need for information with the project's ability to gather and communicate. Tip: share as much information as you can to the other groups with the project team (the people actually doing the work of the project), as you can. The organization may have policies or guidelines around what can and can not be shared outside executive offices; share as much information with the team as much as possible without violating these policies. You will find sharing positive reports will boost morale, while sharing negative reports will stop the rumors that will further erode morale.
Be prepared to capture and report information by stakeholder group, department or sub-project. The individual groups on your team will want the ability to view their progress in isolation from the rest of the team. Tip: make sure that your work is interrupted so that the activities carried out by individual groups or departments are identifiable. This will allow you to report Group Performance by the group or department by department and still roll totals up to report for the entire project.
The information is expected to communicate will lead the entire project activities. Your plans should include the metrics that must be met in order to support the information you want to communicate. You will need to identify who is responsible for providing the information and where the information is to be stored and reported. There are two questions you need to ask yourself before you commit to a relationship:
1. How can I get this information? (Ie what metrics do I need to capture and where will they come from)
2. Where can I store the parameters?
Failure to respond to both questions means that either you have to alter your plan to task someone to gather the metrics, identify a tool to capture and retrieve the metric, or drop the requirement.
Finally, do not forget individual accomplishments and rewards when reporting project progress. There's nothing like good news to keep the morale of the top team and the realization celebration a team member is something that most of the sponsors like to hear about.
How to communicate
There are many different means of communication available to you - face to face, e-mail, intranet, internet, mail, telephone, video conferencing, etc., Etc. , which can be grouped into 2 groups: communications "push" and "pull" of communication. Push communications requires to push the recipient information as the name suggests, while pull communications requires the recipient to actively retrieve information from a central source. Web sites and centralized repositories are examples of pull communications, while e-mail and meetings are examples of push communications.
Preference is to push or pull communications is typically a personal preference. Some people are concerned with better information when it is presented to them and some prefer to retrieve it at their convenience. Be prepared for conflicting demands from individuals in the groups of stakeholders. You may have to take the final decision on which method to use if there are conflicting demands. Alternatively, you may be able to identify a spokesperson for the group that will have the power to identify the needs of the group. The exception to this rule is the sponsor of the project. Because only one or two of these people there is, you must ensure that the communication methods suit their needs.
Tip: If you determine that the project must have a new tool, such as a web site, to meet a requirement of the interested parties, it is necessary to justify the cost with a business case . Communicate the benefits of the project in terms of business that justify the costs. You can also include the benefits that replace the project. For example, a web site or tool such as Lotus Notes could benefit all the organization carries out projects, and can also provide a benefit to operations. It may also want to explore having the PMO, or Operations bear the cost of the new instrument.
When communicating
Your communication program will be driven by the needs of your audience and availability of information to be communicated. For example, if you have the bandwidth, you could report on any metrics managed by daily MS Project files. On the other hand, it is not possible to report on the results of the meeting Porta until Porta meeting was actually held. There is also no reason why a report transmitted to a group of bi-weekly stakeholders, can not be communicated to another group every week.
You must use common sense, as well as capture the requirements your stakeholders. If you choose to use a "town hall" to communicate to all stakeholders, do not schedule the meeting to occur weekly. Tip: When you schedule a meeting that involves you (or another member of the team) the communication of information to the public, count the public, multiply that number by the number of hours the meeting lasts and multiply that number by the rate of work load for that group. Avoid spending large amounts on frequent communications.
Other meetings, such as status meetings with project team should be done more often to prevent the project going off the rails. I find that when the project is on track, weekly status review meetings are sufficient. When the project encounters problems, you might want to increase the frequency to better control the work. In extreme cases, as a rescue of the project, you may need to keep a day. Tip: When the project is running smoothly and you have an alternate means of identifying completed tasks, do not be afraid to cancel a review of state and give the team an hour off meeting!
Remember that communication is part of the project work. You should handle the work in MS Project files as other activities of the project, but be sensible - do not overload yourself by tracking every meeting in MS Project. You must use the style "go around" management if your team is placed, there is no need to keep track of each informal meeting you have with individual team members. Use MS Project to help control the project, do not overload yourself with work.
Tools and Techniques
Tools and techniques include the tools available to transmit information, the tools available to gather the information and tools available to store and retrieve information. Conveying tools include email, websites, webcasts, conference calls, video conferencing, public directories, town hall meetings, and graphics tools such as Excel. What you're communicating, how you need to communicate, and communication budget will determine which of these tools you will use.
There is a tool that rely on more than any other to manage information about the project: MS Project (or Primavera, if this is the tool the company has selected to use). These instruments are referred to as Project Management Information Systems (PMIS) by most PMP preparation courses and examinations in the PMBOK. These tools are able to capture, manipulate and signaling the most relevant information of the project so you must be very familiar with their use. There are many excellent courses available that will land in the fundamentals of their use.
The organization may employ a time tracking system, in which case it has an additional source of information. Your time tracking tool should allow you to report on the cost of labor for the project (ie support the charging time for the project code). It must also support the reporting of these costs by the group and the type of work. For example, it should say how much time was spent last week on the analysis of the software project. You should reconcile the metrics of time tracking system with the MS project files to ensure consistency. Tip: If the time tracking system is used to generate the pay check for your team, make your bible. A discrepancy means MS Project file may be inaccurate.
MS Project comes with a selection of "canned" reports ready to use. I have found that it is most useful for reporting progress of the project is the ability to export data to an Excel spreadsheet. Because Excel has been around so long is feature rich and supports virtually any type of chart or graph imaginable. The trick is to export the necessary information to base your report, then edit it in Excel. MS Project contains ample help facilities on how to export data.
I mentioned the two different categories for distributing information: push and pull. Many of the communications of your project lend themselves equally well to both methods. For example, if you communicate you can review your report of the panel with the steering committee of the executive project during a meeting, push it to the project team via an e-mail transmission, and store on a public directory or website of the project.
Finally, remember that the accuracy of the information provided on the project will have a profound effect, good or bad, on your reputation. You need to do everything possible to ensure that the information communicated is accurate. Measures such as reconciliation between sheets and MS Project files can save you from making claims about the progress of the project that are not supported by the facts. Even with that degree of information control can still be misleading or outdated. Be open and honest with your communication: inform the public where information comes from, how it was compiled, and how old it is. be imminent with all the information that could have an impact on the accuracy of the reports and let the audience to form their own opinions of the accuracy and value of your communications.
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