CHAPTER 5
Planning Project Communications
If you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail.1
—The Reverend H. K. Williams, religious leader and author
Most often, we associate the concept of failing to plan or prepare with the overall project. If we fail to plan the project, we are planning for the project to fail. However, it can also be applied to planning communication on a project. What are the chances of project success if we fail to plan our communications? This chapter incorporates key concepts from other chapters in this book into the first process in the PMBOK® Guide’s Project Communications Management Knowledge Area, which is Plan Communications Management (Figure 5.1).
Figure 5.1 Plan communications
The purpose of this chapter is to help you:
• Understand the purpose, content, and development of a project communications management plan
• Demonstrate how to effectively use a project communications management plan
• Examine a communications matrix
• Put it into practice: Planning communications in traditional, agile, and virtual project teams
As we work with, and communicate with, various stakeholder groups, having an effective project communications management plan is critical—not only to have it, but to use it! So, let’s start with a question.
If you are a project manager, how much time do you spend communicating when working on a project? This refers to how much time you are spending communicating on a project, not how much time you should be spending. For team members, think about how much time you think your project manager spends communicating on a project. Put an X somewhere between 0 percent and 100 percent on the continuum below:
According to the PMBOK® Guide, studies show that “top project managers spend about 90 percent of their time on a project in communicating”2—with external stakeholders, groups, project teams, individuals, management, project sponsor, and others. Hopefully, you marked your X near 90 percent!
To help you keep track of how much time you spend communicating, consider making a time log. For one or two days on a project, track how much of your time is spent communicating. Is it aligned with how much time you think you should be communicating? The results could be very enlightening. To get started, a daily log template can be found in Appendix C.
Since project managers are to be spending the majority of their time communicating, it is best to have a plan. A project communications management plan.
Project Communications Management Plan
The PMBOK® Guide defines Plan Communications Management as “the process for developing an appropriate approach and plan for project communications activities based on the information needs of each stakeholder or group, available organizational assets, and the needs of the project.”3 In other words, consider it your “how to” document. How will you communicate with various stakeholder groups? How will you utilize the processes, procedures, policies, plans, and knowledge already established by the organization? What new processes or procedures might be needed? What, when, and who will send and receive information—and how will that information be distributed? Where will project information be stored and how will it be retrieved? How will the information be disposed of at the end of the project? The purpose of a project communications management plan is to answer these and other questions in guiding the project team’s communications to “ensure timely and appropriate planning, collection, creation, description, storage, retrieval, management, control, monitoring, and ultimate disposition of project information.”4
Plan Communications Management happens in the planning process group. It is our “communications road map.” It is our guide for keeping everyone informed—with the right message, at the right time, using the right methods, for the right reasons. The other chapters in this book provide insight into these different factors. The project communications management plan is where you bring them all together.
There are many forms of a project communications management plan. As with any project management tool, technique, or template, you may need to tailor it to fit your project and organization. More complex, larger projects will have a very comprehensive project communications management plan. A comprehensive project communications management plan may include items like your communications approach or strategy, roles and responsibilities, change control, organizational policies and procedures, meeting rules, technology considerations, templates, and other pertinent content. For a small project, the project communications management plan may simply have one or two items.
Regardless of the size or complexity of the project, here is a word of caution: Just because you have a template or form does not mean that you fill it out and you are done. Project management is not about “form filling.” It is about adapting the templates, tools, and techniques to meet your project, stakeholder, and organizational needs—and then using them!
Project management is not about “form filling.” It is about adapting the templates, tools, and techniques to meet your project, stakeholder, and organizational needs—and then using them!
Take a look at the example in Exhibit 5.1. This is a sample outline of a table of contents for a project communications management plan. You can find more detail about the individual elements of this sample outline in Appendix C.
Exhibit 5.1
Communications management plan table of contents—sample outline
Table of contents
1. Overview and Purpose
2. Organizational Policies and Procedures
a. Communications Processes
b. Technology and Information Storage
3. Stakeholder Communications
4. Communications Matrix
5. Change Control
6. Project Team
a. Contact Information
b. Roles and Responsibilities
c. Reports
d. Meetings and Calls
7. Signatures
8. Appendix 1: Glossary of Terms/Abbreviations
9. Appendix 2: Communication Templates
10. Appendix 3: Communication Examples
11. Version Control
Adding a glossary with a list of terminology and abbreviations that are pertinent to your project, organization, or industry helps to avoid misunderstandings, especially on global, culturally diverse project teams. Attaching documents such as diagrams, charts, templates, and communication examples helps facilitate the sharing of project information. Depending on the size and complexity of your project, your table of contents may look different and contain more or fewer elements than the sample outline in Exhibit 5.1.
One additional recommendation: Do not make your project communications management plan so voluminous and so complicated that no one uses it. It needs to be proportionate to the size and complexity of your project, and the project experience of your team. The less project management experience your team has, the more information is included in your project communications management plan. Otherwise, there is a greater risk of miscommunication occurring.
Your project communications management plan must be crystal clear. It needs to provide guidance to the project team, to avoid any ambiguity or uncertainty in project communications logistics and fundamentals. It is also an evolving “how to” document throughout the life of the project. As communication challenges arise, update your project communications management plan so that future challenges can be quickly addressed or avoided.
Create the Plan. Follow the Plan.
When developing a project communications management plan, where do you begin? Start by reviewing the project communications management plans of previous, similar projects. Review the lessons learned. What worked well? What needed improvement? What project communications areas were challenging? Share and discuss the findings with your project team. You can learn a lot from the experiences of other project teams and avoid mistakes that others have made. Once you have completed the review and discussion, you can start to collaborate and develop your own project communications management plan as a team. Working as a team will ensure that the collective thoughts, ideas, and resources from the team are being considered and incorporated. In addition to team building, working together adds greater experience and value to your plan, which benefits the team and stakeholders.
Your project communications management plan should include all stakeholders that you have identified in your project (see Chapter 3), and address the aspects of the project that impact them most. Incorporate the basics of good project communication discussed in Chapter 4, and make sure your plan aligns with the ground rules you set with your team (see Appendix E). The information in Chapter 7 will help you choose the best tools for executing your plan. Since all projects bring about change, your project communications management plan should incorporate elements for handling and communicating that change with stakeholders, as presented in Chapter 8. The content in Chapter 9 will assist you in handling conflict when it occurs, both when working together as a team and when working with outside stakeholders.
The project communications management plan is designed to be developed by, and used by, the project team to ensure that stakeholders are receiving the project information that they need, and that the project communications are effective. The project communications management plan is one element in the overall project plan. You may have other “management plans” for scope, schedule, cost, quality, resources, risks, procurement, and/or stakeholders. Therefore, you will probably not be sharing your project communications management plan with those outside the team, unless you are sharing the entire project plan.
Once the project communications management plan has been developed, you now need to follow it. Here is a partial list of techniques to ensure your project communications are being used effectively.
1. Take ownership: In project management, ownership is everything. Make sure that someone on the team owns the project communications management plan. This individual is responsible for ensuring that the project communications management plan gets followed properly, reviewed regularly, and updated as needed.
2. Review regularly: Key elements in the project communications management plan should be reviewed at every project status meeting. Important communications should be reflected in project status reports.
3. Keep a log: With so much information being shared on a project, maintain a log (or journal) of critical communications. This will serve you well when documenting lessons learned.
4. Get feedback: Getting feedback is essential for effective project communications. In communicating and engaging with stakeholders, listen to their feedback and incorporate relevant input. We will discuss feedback further in Chapter 6.
5. Do a systems assessment: Ask the project team and others who are accessing project information if systems for storing and retrieving project information are working properly. Make necessary adjustments or provide ongoing assistance.
6. Ask questions: If you are uncertain about a process in the project communications management plan or a specific message, ask others. Get clarity before sending project information. One valuable technique is to have others read (or listen to) your message before sending (or saying) it. Ask: How does this read to you? How does this sound to you? This activity can make a tremendous difference.
7. Lead by example: Make sure that you are effectively communicating. Over time, others will see your example and aspire to do the same.
8. Make updates: If something is not working in your project communications, make changes. As changes occur, make necessary updates to the project communications management plan. Keep track of changes through proper revision control. Remember, the project communications management plan evolves over the life of the project.
As you gain more project communications experience, add to this list. Keep it handy as an easy reference to ensure that you are building these actions into your project communications.
Having a project communications management plan means using it. However, don’t overlook the informal communications that often take place on a project. For example, osmotic communications—a term coined by Alistair Cockburn, coauthor of the Agile Manifesto—occur when team members pick up relevant information through the conversations of other team members seated in the same room. These informal discussions and interactions happen outside your project communications management plan, and may also need to be documented.
Project Communications Take Time
How does a project manager balance communicating with getting the work done on a project, especially if project managers truly do spend 90 percent of their time communicating? The answer: it depends. It depends on the size and complexity of the project. For example, if the size of the project is micro or small, the project manager will do more project work, and less project managing. The communication time will be less on a micro or small project because there are fewer deliverables, the timeline is shorter, and the team is smaller. However, for medium, large, or superlarge projects which are highly complex, lengthy, and may have a large project team and many stakeholders, the project manager will spend more time communicating, and less time actually doing project work on deliverables and tasks.
For these types of projects (large, complex, lengthy), project teams may consider adding a person to the project team who is an expert in communication. Often, you will have subject matter experts in various fields—technology, finance, engineering, marketing, etc.—on the project team. Having a communication expert on the project team could be extremely beneficial. This individual would work closely with the project manager to help orchestrate and support communications, assist in creating and executing the project communications management plan, and help reduce the risk of the wrong message being sent to the wrong stakeholder groups, at the wrong time, for the wrong purpose. Keep in mind, however, that it is the project manager who is ultimately responsible for ensuring that the project communications management plan is created and properly executed.
While the project manager is usually the “outward-facing voice” on the project, it is the responsibility of all project team members to communicate—and to be skillful communicators. (Chapters 4 and 7 provide more information for the entire project team on effective communication approaches and tools.) Effective communication skills enable the team to provide clarity, reduce uncertainty, meet stakeholder expectations, demonstrate accountability, and build trust. Make sure the team is also utilizing the team operating principles to help guide their communications as outlined in Chapter 4.
Communications Matrix
A communications matrix provides an “at a glance” document to quickly assess what information needs to be distributed, to whom, when, and how. A communications matrix can also take many forms and is developed together by the project team. Information that is included in a communications matrix can come from a variety of sources—the sponsor, project manager, management, project team, stakeholder analysis, lessons learned from other projects, company requirements, etc. Table 5.1 shows an example of a project communications matrix.
Table 5.1 Project communications matrix example
Since projects have lots of information, having an electronic document repository can be helpful. This is a secure online location where all project data can be stored. Instead of e-mailing documents, a link to the information can be provided. This helps with accessibility, version control, and data security.
Putting It into Practice
Here are a few practical tips, fun activities, and useful ideas for how you can implement the concepts in this chapter into your project environment. Note that ideas listed in one type of team may be adapted to other teams. Be creative. Use these as a starting point. Add your own ideas to build your communications toolkit.
Planning project communications |
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Traditional project teams |
• Do a team survey to gather information on communication styles, communication preferences, technology challenges, experiences, etc. • Establish roles and responsibilities for each participant on the project—project manager, project coordinator, sponsor, team member, subject matter expert, etc.—specifically focused on communicating and setting expectations. Review these roles and responsibilities at the project kick-off meeting. • Look for opportunities where you can meet face-to-face with key stakeholders. Share how you plan to communicate with them, and answer their questions. This will help build relationships, so that when something happens, you have an existing relationship as a foundation. |
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Agile project teams |
• Ensure that the team is using proper agile communication methods for communicating frequently and effectively—and quickly. One way agile teams do this is to use information radiators or Big Visible Charts, which provide a highly visible way to convey project information at a glance. • Plan out a communication calendar and post it in your team room or project team site. List the planned communication activities scheduled for each day. Visually “check off” activities as they are completed, and report on this progress at least weekly with the project team. • If the team is new to agile concepts, plan and conduct training opportunities where team members can experiment with agile concepts (including communicating using artifacts and meetings). |
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• Create a glossary of terms together so that team members in different cultures have a clear understanding of the terms that will be used on the project. • When conducting virtual meetings and conference calls, be respectful of the different time zones for team members. Plan to rotate the meeting times to minimize the inconvenience of early-morning or late-night conference calls. • In planning communication with virtual teams, make sure you have a backup plan established. This might be when technology fails, when communication breaks down, when a conflict occurs, or when an emergency happens. Plan out the “what if’s” so that when they occur, your virtual team is ready. |
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Summary
Project communication is essential to project success. A project communications management plan helps you and the project team stay on track in keeping others informed—with the right message, at the right time, for the right purpose. As the project team implements the project communications management plan, the team may find adjustments need to be made. The project communications management plan should evolve throughout the life of the project. There are several techniques that you can use to ensure that your project communications management plan is being used effectively. Consider adding a communications specialist to your project team when needed.
Project communications take time. A communications matrix provides an “at a glance” look at project communications. And finally: If you fail to plan your project communications, you plan to fail. Don’t overlook the importance and value of having an effective project communications management plan for your project—not only to have it, but to use it!
Key Questions
1. Create a time log for tracking your project communications. For 1 or 2 days, track how much time you spend communicating on the project. Review the results. What surprised you? What didn’t surprise you?
2. What challenges or project risks might you encounter if your project team does not have a project communications management plan?
3. Take a look at the list of techniques presented in this chapter to ensure your project communications management plan is being used effectively. What other techniques would you add to the list and why?
Notes
1. Williams (1919), p. 81.
2. Project Management Institute (2017), PMBOK® Guide, 6th ed., p. 61.
3. Project Management Institute (2017), PMBOK® Guide, 6th ed., p. 359.
4. Kloppenborg et al. (2015), pp. 443–444.
References
Kloppenborg, T. J., V. Anantatmula, K. N. Wells. 2015. Contemporary Project Management, 3rd ed. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
Project Management Institute. 2017. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge. 6th ed. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
Williams, H. K. 1919. “Young People’s Service.” The Biblical World, 53, no 1, pp. 80–81. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, Illinois.