If you don't plan early with your communications plan you can run into many communication issues such as delay in message delivery, communication of information to the wrong audience, insufficient communication to the stakeholders which all will lead to disaster.
Information needs methods of storage, retrieval and ultimate disposition of the project information in order to be successful. This may include:
- Who needs what information and who is authorized to access it
- When they will need the information
- where the information should be stored
- what format the information should be stored in
- How the information can be retrieved
- Whether time zone, language barriers, and cross-cultural considerations need to be considered
Let's take a look at the Inputs, Tools and Techniques, and Outputs of this process.
1) Project Management Plan
- Provides information on how the project will be executed, monitored, controlled, and closed.
2) Stakeholder Register
- Provides the information needed to plan the communication with the project stakeholders
3) Enterprise Environmental Factors
- The structure of the organization will have a major impact on the communications requirements
4) Organizational Process Assets
- Lessons learned and historical information can help with decisions on communications and results of them on similar projects
5) Communication Requirements Analysis
- An analysis of communication requirements determines the information needs of the project stakeholders.
- It's important for you to consider the number of communication channels as this will add complexity to the project's communications
- n (n-1)/2 (n= number of stakeholders)
- The source of these communication channels may include:
- Organizational charts
- Project organization and stakeholder responsibilities relationships
- Disciplines, departments, and specialities involved in the project
- Logistics of how many persons will be involved with the project and where
- Internal information needs
- External information needs
- Stakeholder information and communication requirements
6) Communication Technology
- The method used to transfer information among project stakeholders may vary.
- Factors that can affect the choice of communication technology include:
- Urgency of the need for information
- Availability of technology
- Ease of use
- Project environment
- Sensitivity and confidentiality of the information
7) Communication Models
- Are used to facilitate communications and the exchange of information may vary on each project
- Basic communication model has a sender and a receiver
- The sequence of steps in this basic model are:
- Encode - thoughts or ideas are translated into language by the sender
- Transmit message - information is sent to receiver using communication channel (medium)
- Decode - message is translated by the receiver back into meaningful thoughts or ideas
- Acknowledge - receiver may signal receipt of the message but it doesn't mean they understand
- Feedback/Response - when message received, decoded and understood the receiver encodes thoughts and ideas into a message and transmits this message back to the sender
8) Communication Methods
- These methods include:
- Interactive communication - between two or more parties performing a multidirectional exchange of information (Meetings, phone calls, video conferencing and instant messages)
- Push communication - Sent to specific recipients who need to receive the information.
- Pull communication - Used for very large groups of people who need to get the information and they will do so by accessing the information on their own. (e-learning, lesson learned databases, knowledge repositories)
9) Meetings
- Having discussions and dialogue with the project team is the most appropriate way to update and communicate project information and are done so through meetings.
10) Communications Management Plan
- Describes how project communication will be planned, monitored, and controlled. It contains the following:
- Stakeholder communication requirements
- Information to be communicated (language, format, content, level of detail)
- Reason for the distribution of that information
- Time frame and frequency of the distribution
- Person responsible for communicating the information
- Person responsible for authorizing release of confidential information
- Person or groups who will receive the information
- Methods or technologies used
- Resources allocated for communication activities (time and budget)
- Escalation process
- Method for updating and refining the communications management plan ad the project progresses
- Glossary of common terminology
- Flow charts of the information flow in the project
- Communication constraints (legislation or regulations, technology, and organizational policies)
- Guidelines and templates for project status meetings
- Use of project website and project management software
11) Project Documents Updates
- May include:
- Project schedule
- Stakeholder register
Source: PMBOK 5th ed.
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