Both projects and people require the right information to run optimally. Every participant involved in the endeavor has different communication and data needs, some of which they may feel the need to hide. For any chance at success, it is imperative that these requirements are properly addressed.
It is the responsibility of a project manager to identify and sustain the communication requirements of stakeholders. For a more efficient approach and managing communications better, having a reliable communication management plan is indispensable.
To develop a successful communication management plan, one must begin by investigating the most effective ways to interact with stakeholders. This plan must display methods to maximize the efficiency of communication as well as describe how to address stakeholder's communication needs.
Additionally, the plan must determine which stakeholder requires which information and when, and also outline what format this information will be conveyed through. Moreover, it is important to ensure that only necessary components are included in the plan and that extraneous details are omitted.
Plan Communication Management is in the planning process group and in the communications management knowledge area. The main output of the process, as you may guess, is the communication management plan.
Inputs of Plan Communications Management Process
- Requirements documentation: Communications requirements can be obtained by using this documentation.
- Stakeholder register: In order to find out specific information needs of the stakeholders, first we have to know who are them and what are their positions in the project.
- Project charter: The list of key stakeholders can be obtained from charter.
- Resource management plan: It contains the list of team members and human resources of a project.
- Stakeholder engagement plan: We can reach the communications needs of stakeholders by using this plan.
- Enterprise environmental factors: Personel policies, organizational culture, risk attitude and risk tresholds of stakeholders, organizational communication channels, softwares, communication tools, geographic distribution of facilities, distance between resources, etc.
- Organizational process assets: Organizational policies and procedures for social media usage, policies and procedures risk management, and change management, organizational communication requirements, guidelines for development, exchange, storage, and retrieval of information, lessons learned repository and historical knowledge gained from the former projects are examples of OPA's used in this process.
Tools & Techniques Used in the Process
- Communication technology: This tool includes a variety of well known options such as e-mail, phone calls and face to face meetings.
- Cultural awareness: Understanding of differences between, cultures, individuals, groups and nations is indispensable to perform this process.
- Political awareness: The project team and the other stakeholders may have differences in all aspects. The awareness for this should be developed and these differences should be used for the benefit of the plan communications process.
- Communication methods: Interactive communication, pull and push communication are examples of communication methods.
- Communication models: It shows how information is sent, received, and understood
- Communication requirements analysis: Parallel with the complexity of the project, by conducting this analysis we decide how many communication channels should exist.
- Communication styles assessment: It is used to identify preferred communication method and format.
- Stakeholder engagement assessment matrix
- Meetings
- Expert judgment