Project Communication: Keeping Things Conveyed

A project communication plan that will convey the updates to a project’s affected stakeholders is a critical part of any project. How well you communicate throughout the life cycle of your project can make the difference between success and failure. We are going to talk about the art of communication in Project Management.

InfoBeans, a CMMi -3 level company, has a set of protocol and guidelines in place. A perfect communication plan takes effect from day one of the project implementation and continues for the entire execution period. Despite all planned efforts, most projects witness a breakdown in communications. 

Communication Best Practices at InfoBeans

At InfoBeans, we are committed to following proactive communication practices that keep all the stakeholders engaged with what’s hot on the plate and what has been taken care of. Effective communication is directly proportional to the success of a project. However, like how no roller coaster is a straight path, each project goes through hiccups despite preventive measures and it’s okay to have hiccups for the health of project execution. Everything depends on how effectively and fast the hiccup is communicated and resolved. Moving along with risk mitigation, we exploit some of the best plans and tools like JIRA, Basecamp, Trello and Slack as needed to keep everyone informed so they can send in their inputs in time irrespective of their location and time zone.

Keeping Communication Fresh

Despite the rich use of such useful tools we cannot take for granted that the receiver will interpret the message as the sender intended. Keeping communication fresh is very important for the health of a project. We make sure to bring more validation to deliverables by conducting calls and meetings through Hangouts, Skype, GoToMeeting, WebEx and AdobeConnect.

Stakeholders require different types of info depending on the priority and state of the project. The project manager and team identify key needs for communication using the following:

• Project Structure existing within the responsible organization

• Guidelines and department engaged in the project

• Organizational Charts

• Internal and external information needs

Remembering 5Ws and 1 H

1.Who needs to be communicated to?

2.What needs to be communicated?

3.When it should be communicated?

4.Where it should be communicated?

5.Why is communication of information essential and to what level is it important?

And last but not the least

1.1H: How does communication need to be done?

This is where modern tools like Slack and JIRA are of great help.

Conclusion

Communication gaps are inevitable, but with proactive participation, in a project can be cured in the early stages of the project resulting in relative and efficient cost optimization.

SLA Tracking, Escalations and Incident Management: To be continued….