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2.3P Plan Communication
(2.3P.P1)
Properly communicating on a project is a critical success factor for managing the expectations of the sponsor and the stakeholders. If these people are not kept well informed of the project progress there is a much greater chance that you will face problems due to differing expectations and surprises. In fact, in many cases where conflicts arise, it is not because of the actual problem, but because the person was surprised.
All projects should communicate status. This includes reporting from the project team to the project manager and reporting from the project manager to the sponsor and stakeholders. Two typical forums for communicating status are through a status meeting and Status Reports. Larger projects or any project that requires culture change need to be more sophisticated in how they communicate to various stakeholders. This more multi-faceted approach is defined in a Communications Plan.
(2.3P.P2)
The processes used to manage communication are described in this section. These processes can be modified as necessary for your project, and then inserted into the Project Management Plan that is created during the 2.1P Define the Work step.
The processes that you use to manage communication vary depending on the size of the project. Small projects tend to have very simple and straight communication paths. Medium projects should be more sophisticated and perhaps utilize a Communications Plan. Medium projects also may be large enough to consider basic document management practices. Large projects should utilize a Communications Plan to make sure the communications is proactive and multi-faceted. In addition large projects also need to consider basic and more sophisticated techniques for managing the documentation on the project.
