Managing Team Communications
,Communicating among and between technical team members does not come naturally. Technical people often simply aren't good communicators. In most cases, they would rather spend their time immersed in the technical details of what they are working on. However, for team members to be truly effective, they have to openly communicate with one another. For some, that will be difficult; for others, it is simply a matter of practice. In this section, I examine the importance and role of communications in the effective team.
Establishing a Communications Model
Getting information to the correct team members at the right time in the project usually determines the success or failure of the project. The project manager must manage the communication process as much as the technical process or risk failure. It isn't possible to manage all the communication in a project; that in itself is more than a full-time job. What the project manager has to do is examine the needs of the project team and make sure that communication occurs at the correct time and with the correct information. The following sections look at those ideas.
Timing
The timing of information can be critical. The following problems can arise if the information comes too soon or too late:
- If the information comes too far in advance of the action needed, it will be forgotten. It's almost impossible to remember information given one year in advance of its use. The project manager has to understand what the various team members need to know and when they need to know it in order to carry out their assignments. Where does this information come from? Like many other things in a project, you can find communication needs in the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), which is discussed in Chapter 5. As you look through the tasks in the WBS, you will see that each team member has to be alerted to upcoming tasks and needs to be in communication with the other team members whose tasks take precedence over their own. The project manager can make this happen.
- A second problem in timing is getting the information needed to the project team members after they need it. Remember that project team members may need a few days to assimilate the information you give them, particularly if you're speaking about a new technology. This requires that you, as the project manager, manage the timing carefully so that all team members have as much information as possible and that you give everyone sufficient time to absorb and process the information in order to get the job done.
Content
The next communications management issue you need to be concerned about is communicating the correct information. This means you must understand what the project team members need to know to be successful. If you don't know what information the team members need, ask them. If the team members don't know, sit down with them and find out what sort of information needs to be given to the team in order to make the project run smoothly. Sometimes you will know what information is needed intuitively; other times you will have to meet with the project team to consider critical information needs. Whichever the case, you need to be in charge of getting the information to your team members at the right time and with the right content.
Choosing Effective Channels
After you have determined when the communication needs to occur for the project team to be successful and you have identified the basic communication content, the choice of how to get the information to the team members becomes important. As the project manager, you should stipulate how the team members will communicate the necessary information to each other. You have a choice among various channels through which communication can flow. The following list takes a look at each of these channels:
Face-to-face, in-person meeting — A verbal, face-to-face, in-person meeting is usually the best way to communicate. Not only can you get immediate feedback, you can see the person's reaction to information in his or her nonverbal cues. However, although this is often the best way to communicate, it's not always possible.
Videoconferencing — The cost of teleconferencing has dropped dramatically, and it is now much less expensive than traveling across the country. And don't forget the time savings. The software available to support these types of meetings has become far more accessible. Products such as NetMeeting and WebCast enable you to conduct face-to-face meetings via video and share slide presentations across the Internet. However, although videoconferencing gives team members a chance to see each other, some people are “telenerds” and don't come off very well on TV. Just be aware that videoconferencing is not the same as in-person, face-to-face communication.
E-mail — E-mail is not, I repeat not, the communication blessing that everyone thinks it is. It does have certain advantages: It is fast, you can read e-mail at your own speed, and I'm sure you all know people who won't respond to voice mail but will respond immediately to e-mail. However, e-mail does have the following drawbacks:
- Volume — Many people get hundreds of e-mails per day. There's a pretty good chance that the e-mail you sent isn't the single most visible e-mail on the recipient's list, even if you put an exclamation point in front of it. Be aware that e-mail is so ubiquitous that it loses the visibility needed to get important information to other people simply because there is so much other e-mail “noise” out there.
- Tone — E-mail tends to be much shorter than voice mail, and often people misinterpret the intended tone of the message. It happens. Be aware that the tone conveyed in your e-mail message may not be the one that you would use if you had voice communication.
- Quality — Sending an e-mail message doesn't automatically make you a good writer. It's still difficult to send clear information to others in written form.
E-mail is very valuable, but you need to remember the caveats I just listed. Although e-mail is a nice invention, it still requires as much management attention by the project manager as any of the other channels of communication.
Manage the frequency of your e-mail use. Don't overuse it, or your messages may end up being dismissed as spam. You also need to manage the distribution list for your e-mails. It's easy to just add another name to the distribution list, but you must resist doing so indiscriminately. Pretend that you only have so many e-mail coins to spend, and spend them wisely and frugally.
Written materials — These are permanent records. That's the good news. If you want to keep the records permanently, write them down. However, as with all of these channels, it requires effort to write things down well. It is also difficult for many people to write succinctly. Some use length to make up for good communication. Keep your writing short and clear, which will benefit the project team.
Phone — The phone is great if you actually get to talk to a live person rather than a recorded message, but a lot of people let the phone ring and dump you into voice mail. (Most people are now conditioned to leave a message and find themselves surprised when a human actually answers.) The phone has the same good points and pitfalls as all the other channels. Like face-to-face communication, its strength lies in the fact that you can get immediate feedback and exchange ideas quickly. As the project manager, you will be in phone meetings often, either on a one-to-one basis or in a conference call. It's important to manage these calls as you would any of the other channels of communication.
Effectively managing communications is a critical factor for successful project management. A complete treatment of this topic is beyond the scope of this book, but an example of effective communications management is certainly in order.
Suppose part of your project involves soliciting review comments from a number of people who will use the process being designed and implemented. You are going to distribute a document that describes the process, and you want these potential end users to return their comments and critique what you are proposing. What is the most effective way to distribute the document and get meaningful feedback from the recipients? For the sake of the example, assume that the document is 50 pages long. Your first impulse might be to send it electronically and ask recipients to respond by making their comments directly on the electronic version. If you are using Microsoft Word, you would request that they use the Track Changes feature. Is this the most effective way? It keeps everything in an electronic format and makes incorporating changes into the final document reasonably straightforward, but look at this request from the recipient's point of view. I know from experience that many people do not like to make edits to an electronic document. They prefer marking up a hard-copy version. Your process does not give them that option, which it probably should. The task of incorporating handwritten feedback is a little more involved than it would be with the electronic markup, but you will likely gain more and better feedback. Getting meaningful feedback is the goal, and you should use whatever means are at your disposal to ensure that happens.
What about the fact that the document is 50 pages long? Is that a barrier to meaningful feedback? I think so. If you agree, then what is the fix? My suggestion is that you dole out the document in sections. Does everyone on the distribution list need to see all 50 pages? Maybe not. Maybe you would get more meaningful feedback by parceling out the document based on level of interest and involvement in the process, rather than asking everyone to read and comment on all 50 pages.
The professional project manager is aware of the communication patterns he or she needs to manage to make it possible for the project team to be successful as a unit. The areas to manage include timing, content, and channel. Although it's probable that most project managers do a lot of the communication management on an ad hoc basis, it's important to be aware of the different areas of communication that you can manage. The skill of managing communication is just as important as any of the technical skills in project management. As a matter of fact, most surveys I've seen list project communication as the most important of all the areas to manage. By being aware of some of the components of project communication, you can be more effective as a project manager.
Managing Communication beyond the Team
To be successful as a project manager, you need to communicate not only within the team but also to various stakeholders outside of the team. Your project may seem successful to you, but unless that is conveyed to the right people outside of the team, it won't matter. The question is then “Who are those right people?”
Managing Communications with the Sponsor
The single most important communication for the whole project is the communication you have with the project sponsor. The sponsor is the person or group of people who have agreed to give you the necessary resources to complete the project, which makes the sponsor your new best friend for this project. Without sponsor involvement in all phases of the project, you will be in dire trouble. This section discusses a couple of good strategies for managing communications with your project sponsor.
The first action to take when you are about to start a project is to go to the sponsor and ask what they want to know and when they want to know it. The sponsor is the one who gets to use the information you pass on and is ultimately the person who has to justify the expenditure on your project. The sponsor may want a different type of information than you are used to giving. It doesn't matter. Sponsors pay the bills, so they should get what they want in the way of communication.
Don't tell the sponsor what they're going to get. For example, don't start talking about earned value and watch the sponsor's eyes glaze over before they can tell you what they want.
A second consideration is to ensure that the sponsor gets information regularly. Status reports should be sent to the sponsor at least once a week. It's not a good idea to hold on to information concerning the project if it is important to the sponsor. Get the information to the sponsor as fast as possible if it will affect the project.
Now it's time to turn to another communication topic you need to consider as a project manager: upward communication filtering.
Upward Communication Filtering and “Good News”
Upward communication filtering is a strange form of distorting information that is found in almost any type of organizational life. It can also be called the good news syndrome. Unfortunately, it can kill a project as fast as any facet of bad communication management. There are two types of upward communication filtering. The first type occurs when the person who is reporting upward — for example, to a sponsor — spins the information or leaves out information so that the communication looks like nothing but good news. For example, instead of saying that a company building has burned down, the person says that everything is under control, that the fire department and insurance company have been called, and that all the people are safe. Sure, some of this is information the sponsor needs to know, but a good-news filter is something that puts a positive spin on everything, often at the expense of accuracy.
If something is going badly on a project, let the sponsor know what's going on as soon as possible. It is a good idea to talk about what you plan to do about the problem, but it never pays to filter problems from upward communication.
The second type of upward communication filtering involves withholding information. Perhaps there is a problem that you think can be resolved sometime in the future, so you withhold the current information from the sponsor, thinking that you can fix the problem. Such actions will almost always come back to bite you. Don't withhold information just because you're worried about a reaction. It's better to give all the news to the sponsor than it is to hope you can fix something that is broken, because if you can't fix the problem, it will just get worse and worse. Go ahead and tell the sponsor the truth.
Communicating with Other Stakeholders
A sponsor isn't the only stakeholder outside of the operating project team. A stakeholder is anyone who has an interest in the outcome of the project. The other stakeholders may be line managers of people on the team or consumers who are going to be involved in user acceptance tests. The best way to keep stakeholders informed is to send them copies of the meeting notes from your status meetings so they're aware of the project's progress. This is simple enough to do but is often overlooked. The effective project manager makes sure all people who have an interest in the project are informed. If there is a special piece of information that will affect only one stakeholder, then get the information to him or her immediately. Once again, you start this whole process by asking what the stakeholders want to know and when. Then you provide it.
Ultimately, communication occurs on a project all the time. A professor whose name I have long forgotten once said, “You can't not communicate.” Although you can't spend all your time managing communications, you do need to be aware of the communication needs of your team and stakeholders at all times. The better you are at satisfying the communication needs of your team members and stakeholders, the better your chances of managing a successful project.