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HomeBlogProject ManagementHow to Create a Project Communication Plan [Step-by-Step]
Project Communication Plan is an important step in Project Management Plan or what is simply called Project Plan. Effective communication goes a long way in creating a simple but an efficient template to apprise the stake holders and leadership teams with periodic project status and updates, to track project progress, analyse potential risks, rework schedules of development plan if necessary and document development steps and results to ensure accessibility and create project case study as needed. For more details on Project Management please refer to PMP certification course.
Project Communication Plan is a communication plan that is meticulously laid out to keep various stake holders of the project such as client, project team members, executive leadership and business owners informed and aligned on the various aspects of the project such as project performance goals, project progress status and monitoring, upcoming schedules, etc. A good project communication plan identifies who is responsible for what level of communication, who should be the audience for a particular level of communication, at what frequency should the communication be sent out for various groups of stakeholders and what level information will be shared specifically with each group of the project stake holders. Project Managers use communication management plan to effectively communicate the project status, project information, risks, roles, responsibilities, and timelines with stake holders while ensuring the stakeholders have the right level of information at the right times that they could consume for their decision making or to plan their next course of action effectively. Apart from this, a good project communication plan facilitates feedback from relevant stakeholders at regular intervals, so that the project team could adapt them into project development early and in the minimum invasive manner.
The complexity of project communication plan arises from the fact that the different audience or different stake holders need to know different details of project at different points of time. The project communication plan therefore needs to identify the need for the communication for different audience in terms of what is the need or necessity of communicating the project needs to specific teams or individuals and how they will be processing or consuming the information shared in project communication plan – for example , in a cross functional feature development that needs to be tested by multiple teams you may need to identify all teams who will be potentially impacted by the change and need to test that their integration with your product is not affected by a new change.
The importance of communication plan in project management cannot be over emphasized in any way. To dwell further into Project Management Plan Communication plan, let us consider an example of a real time project requirement and come up with a project communication plan template or project communication plan example that helps us effectively manage and time our communication to various stakeholders in reliable and informed manner.
Project Summary: Build a new website and mobile application for XYZ Bank
Project Communication Goals
Stakeholder Information Plan: Project Communication Audience, Frequency and Communication Channel
| Personnel/Team | Position/Role | Frequency | Communication Channel | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andy Adams | Vice President | Important Milestones/ once every month | Progress Updates, Potential Risks and Accomplishments in email | Prefers module level updates. Do not include detailed design or feature specific updates. |
| Perry Price | IT Director | Weekly/Bi-weekly | Weekly/Bi-weekly meetings, MOMs in Email | High level updates on features, budget consumption, resourcing, risks and timelines. |
| John Jacobs | Project Coordinator | Daily | Weekly Check-in Meeting and Daily updates in touch base calls, emails, as needed | Detailed design discussions, contact for requirement clarification, feedback and POC for follow up and approvals |
| Project Team | Internal Development Team | Daily | All Daily Progress Updates, requirement changes, weekly meeting and leadership announcements in calls and emails, as needed | Should be included in all communications of day-to-day activities, availability, resource allocation and management, progress updates, bottlenecks, and achievements. |
The above table serves as a communication plan template example or a project management communication plan example that you can follow on a high level.
Effective Project Communication matters because it efficiently co-ordinates, validates, tracks, and documents the path between the future project goal and the current project status. It allows the project managers to seek timely feedback and to obtain critical client information that is crucial for the execution of the project. It ensures all the stakeholders like the project team, contractors, cross functional teams, project leaders and executive leadership is always aligned on the process and progress of the project. Apart from these, it is imperative ethical responsibility to always communicate the project process, progress, risks, and bottlenecks accurately and transparently to ensure acceptance and approval of the final deliverables the project by all concerned parties.
The important elements of Project communication plan or establishing the project communication strategies are:
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Some of the common pitfalls while creating a project communication plan template or project communication plan example are as follows:
All projects will need a lot of discussions in the form of meetings and emails. The information that is exchanged during one-on-one emails and the outcomes of meeting attended by multiple people often go undocumented, causing valuable information loss that can impact project tracking in long term. So it is important to establish, agree, and follow a communication guideline to document and store all important information exchanges that could have happened in meetings or one-on-one emails in an accessible location and create back up as necessary.
As discussed, identifying key communicators responsible for sending out project communication is an important element of writing a project communication plan. We often tend to miss to consider that the requirement changes might affect project timelines, and this will necessitate reviewing and adjusting project communication plan accordingly on regular basis and come up with an alternate or back up communication plan or the contingency plan as needed. Also, we will need to identify backup for key communicators to ensure that the communication plan does not fall through in the event of unavailability of our key communicators.
Excess information is as bad as giving no information at all. Therefore, identifying and grouping the key stakeholders based on the level of information that they can consume is very important. Most of us are aware of the perils of under communication but we tend to easily overlook the impacts of over communication. Over communication will provide abundant information, more than what is necessary and can send your audience into the mode of excessive analysis which is often unwarranted and is bad use of their time and energy. This can also cause a lot of confusion and raise more questions which might require you to provide more unnecessary information without any clear purpose or benefit to show.
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After we have identified stakeholders, finalized format, frequency, and have a created a good Project Communication plan – we need to understand to use it efficiently to reap the maximum benefit out of it. We will need to publish the Project Communication Plan to all stakeholders, so they know when to expect an update and they do not float around emails asking for updates to you or your team. Your team also benefits from the regular updates by understanding the progress/parallel work that is done on the overall project and it brings in a feeling of one large team.
We can then assign tasks through a small RACI matrix to identify who is responsible, accountable, consulted and informed for tasks in project communication so there is a process of review and accountability to implement sensitive information control and avoid any undue or half-baked information from being shared to the shareholders. It is easier to plan an alternate plan with such an assignment in an event of unavailability of any of the key communicators.
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Project Management Communication Plan example is shown in a image below
Communication plan provides an easy way to implement information control for sensitive information. Usually, an algorithm or a flowchart can be used to standardize the process of communicating sensitive information. In a communication plan example, you can also include a step-by-step algorithm to share sensitive information which will act as a guideline for key communicators as shown below:
This simple algorithm, if included in project management communication plan template or project management communication plan example, can work as effective strategy for information access control for sensitive of classified information. Also, project management communication strategies employed by the organization also guide managing sensitive information across all relevant stakeholders.
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There is a general guideline of using 6 Cs for effective communication in any form. The communication should be - Clear, concise, complete, considerate, correct, courteous. This is always a fundamental rule that needs to be followed in project communication plan as well. Apart from ensuring your project communication plan incorporates all qualities listed above, you can follow the below best practices to get maximum benefit out of your communication plan.
A project communication plan template that can be used for a relatively complex communication plan is shown in the image below:
Source: pmi.org
In conclusion, Project Communication Plan is a documented, standard, agreed upon communication plan created by Project Managers as part of Project Management Plan to track, document and manage the project communication with all stakeholders and invested parties. When it is implemented correctly, it works as a guideline to effective assign responsibilities to key communicators and help in efficiently communicating the project process, progress, and parameters to all the stakeholders
Communication Plans must include Communication Goals, Identifying Suitable Audience, Assigning Key Communicators, Frequency and Timeline
Project Manager, in consultation with his team and other invested parties are responsible for developing a project communication plan.
Verbal, Non-Verbal, Writing and Visual communication that is shared in calls, one-to-one meetings, emails and graphs are the types of communication in the project communication plan.
Analyse the requirement, Define Communication Goals, Identify audience, Create a strategy and agree on a format, frequency and evaluate the results.
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