Role

Manage Communication (Large Projects)

1

Project Manager

Determine the project stakeholders

In some cases these are stakeholder groups such as a project steering committee. In other cases, there may be a single person such as the sponsor.

2

Project Manager

Determine the communication needs for each stakeholder

The project manager can categorize the communication needs into three areas.

• Mandatory. This generally includes project Status Reports, legal requirements, financial reporting, etc. This information is pushed out to the recipients.

• Informational. This is information people want to know or that they may need for their jobs. This information is usually made available for people to read, but requires them to take the initiative, or pull the communication.

• Marketing. This communication is designed to build buy-in and enthusiasm for the project and its deliverables. This type of information is pushed out to the appropriate people. You may also want to “brand” a large project if you require the organization culture or work habits to change (See 2.3.5T Branding a Project).

3

Project Manager

For each stakeholder, brainstorm how to fulfill the communication need

It is important for the project manager to use Status Reports and other communication methods to manage expectations. See 3.2.3.1P for more information on managing stakeholder expectations. However, that is usually not enough communication for larger projects.

For each stakeholder, determine the information they need to know, how often they need an update, and the best manner to deliver the information. At this point, be creative in looking for ways to communicate to the project stakeholders. For instance, all stakeholders still need an updated project status. The Steering Committee may need to get together for an executive briefing and to provide strategic direction every other month. The project sponsor may need a personal briefing on a monthly basis. A quarterly newsletter may need to go out to the entire client organization for informational and marketing purposes. For other examples of communication mechanisms, see 2.3.4T Communications Plan Examples.

4

Project Manager

Determine the effort required

Estimate the effort required to create and distribute each of the identified communication options outlined in step 3. Also determine the potential benefit of the communication to the recipient and the project team.

5

Project Manager

Prioritize the communication options

Discard the communication options that require high effort for marginal benefit. Also discard those that provide marginal benefit even though they may take little effort from the project team. Implement the communication options that provide high value and require low effort from the project team. Also evaluate those options that have high value and require a high level of effort from the project team. Some of these might make sense to implement while others may not.

6

Project Manager

Implement mandatory communications

Regardless of the prioritization, implement any communication options that are mandatory for the project. This will definitely include project Status Reports, but there may also be government-required reports, legal reports, etc.

7

Project Manager

Add the resulting communication activities to the schedule

This will include assigning frequencies, due dates, effort hours and a responsible person(s) for each communication option implemented.

8

Project Manager

Plan for and manage documentation

Larger projects can also create a lot of documentation. This documentation can easily get out of control to a point where the information is scattered, hard to find and hard to organization. The process of managing documentation is much easier if the project manager takes care to plan what the documents will look like, where they will be stored and how they will be controlled. The document management process is described in 2.3.1T Manage Documents – Basics and 2.3.3T Manage Documents - Advanced.