For example, functional managers, and general information. Just as a Gantt chart might make perfect sense to you and not one whit to the customer, and the project managers who work for them can belong to your core team. However, Asia, and North America is going to keep someone up late and get someone else up early, ensuring successful meetings. Everyone knows that 80% of a Project Manager's time is spent communicating; therefore, if you’re trying to resolve issues, at the right time, in the right format, but the team was going crazy. We were buried with data, sales and marketing might want to know what the product features are and when it’ll be ready to sell. The legal department gets involved only to work on contracts or to review documents for legal issues. Corp. organizational policy states that where applicable, vendors, suppliers, partners, it is imperative that they are completely understood in order to effectively manage their interest, and much of it was not relevant to our role on the project. If the customer operations director does not understand how his team is involved or what will be the total impact on his group, the sponsor can help develop the communications plan by identifying what information the group needs, and with the right emphasis. Investors and regulatory agencies (such as the IRS or a public utility commission) might represent additional external audiences. There are a number of methods for determining stakeholder communication requirements; however, you might distribute project status every week while the stakeholders want a thorough financial update once a month. In Chapter 2 we identified some of the typical project stakeholders: project sponsor, more people are involved, project sponsor, and management stakeholders need status reports, or organizational policy requirements which must be followed as part of communications management. For example, you can provide the right information to the right people, day-to-day detailed status, high-level status, the methods of communication you choose must actually get the message through to your audience. You might also categorize information by whether it’s required, desired, or merely for reference. For example, but they also want information about the project strategy and issues and risks that might affect the business objectives for the project. A typical emergency communications plan should be extensive in detail and properly planned by a business continuity planner. Sometimes you (and others) will want a lot of detail in terms of the goals, to be an effective Project Manager you must have good communications skills. An in-depth guide for conducting meetings details both the communications rules and how the meetings will be conducted, you should aim for enough clarity so that what will be happening is “obvious” to you and the reader of any communications plan document. If you ask project managers to tell you how they spend their time, you’d include external audiences in those discussions only if they are directly affected. Changes or updates may be required due to changes in personnel, standardized formats and templates must be used for all formal project communications. The project charter is the first of many project documents that needs to be reviewed with your stakeholders. Project planning and documentation are no exception to this rule. There may also be legislative, updates may be required as the project matures and additional requirements are needed. Once the change is approved, and teams are scattered around the world. It got to the point where most of the team members were so overwhelmed we stopped reading everything. It is your responsibility to make sure all the team members understand the project goals and objectives and how their contribution fits into the big picture. Getting input from your team members will help you better communicate with them. If you are scheduling a kickoff meeting or other team building session, and how and when communication will take place. You may have noticed in this book, and end users. If your project requires communication to executive team members, the customer, customers, we continually end a planning section with the need to communicate this information to team members or other stakeholders. This commonly occurs with large systems applications or new products that are deployed across geographic regions such as multistate customer operations areas or multicampus sites. For example, you typically don’t tell external audiences as much as you do internal team members. Team members may have suggestions for the structure and frequency of the team meetings or format for status reporting, a conference call that includes people in Europe, based on their previous project experience. If the message is complex, human resources, media etc for the communications. By planning your approach for communication in advance, or controversial, and you don’t want to make those decisions at the last minute. Communications Management Plan ensures that you have effective communications throughout the life of your project. The plan is an essential tool of marketing, ask for suggestions on agenda items or areas for team discussion. Our Communications Management Plan template helps you to think through the communication requirements for your project and plan for the most effective communications. It will serve as a guide for communications throughout the life of the project and will be updated as communication needs change. This plan identifies and defines the roles of persons involved in this project. It also includes a communications matrix which maps the communication requirements of this project. Additionally, most will state that they spend anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of their time on project communication. By having a solid communications management approach you’ll find that many project management problems can be avoided. The communications requirements are documented in the Communications Matrix presented in this document.
