Project Communications Management

Project Communications Management Essay 1. What are the three main processes in project communications management? Briefly describe each process. ANSWER: 1. Planning communications management involves determining the information and communications needs of the stakeholders. Who needs what information? When will they need it? How will the information be given to them? The outputs of this process include a communications management plan, project management plan updates, and project documents updates. 2. Managing communications involves creating, distributing, storing, retrieving, and disposing of project communications based on the communications management plan. The main outputs of this process are project communications, project management plan updates, project documents updates, and organizational process assets updates. Recall from Chapter 4 that organizational process assets include formal and informal plans, policies, procedures, guidelines, information systems, financial systems, management systems, lessons learned, and historical information. These assets help people understand, follow, and improve business processes in an organization. 3. Monitoring communications involves ensuring that stakeholder communication needs are met. 2. Describe the concepts of informal methods for distributing information. How do they compare to formal methods for distributing information? ANSWER: It is not enough for project team members to submit status reports to their project managers and other stakeholders and assume that everyone who needs to know that information will read the reports. Some technical professionals might assume that submitting the appropriate status reports is sufficient because they are introverts and prefer communicating that way. Occasionally, that approach might work, but many people prefer informal communications. 75 percent of the general population are extroverts, so they enjoy talking to other people. Often, many nontechnical professionals—from colleagues to managers—prefer to have a two-way conversation about project information, rather than reading detailed reports, e-mails, or Web pages to try to find pertinent information. Many colleagues and managers want to know the people working on their projects and develop a trusting relationship with them. They use informal discussions about the project to develop these relationships. Therefore, project managers must be good at nurturing relationships through good communication. Many experts believe that the difference between good project managers and excellent project managers is their ability to nurture relationships and use empathic listening skills. Effective creation and distribution of information depends on project managers and project team members having good communication skills. Communicating includes many different dimensions such as writing, speaking, and listening, and project personnel need to use all of these dimensions in their daily routines. In addition, different people respond positively to different levels or types of communication. For example, a project sponsor may prefer to stay informed through informal discussions held once a week over coffee. The project manager needs to be aware of this preference and take advantage of it. The project sponsor will give better feedback about the project during these informal talks than through some other form of communication. Informal conversations allow the project sponsor to exercise a leadership role and provide insights and information that are critical to the success of the project and the organization as a whole. Short face-to-face meetings are often more effective than electronic communications, particularly for sensitive information. 3. How do you determine the number of communications channels? How does the number of people involved in a project affect this value? How can project managers control this value? ANSWER: An important aspect of information distribution is the number of people involved in a project. As the number of people involved increases, the complexity of communications increases because there are more communications channels or pathways through which people can communicate. There is a simple formula for determining the number of communications channels as the number of people involved in a project increases. You can calculate the number of communications channels as follows: number of communications channels = n(n-1)/2 where n is the number of people involved. For example, two people have one communications channel: (2(2–1))/2 = 1. Three people have three channels: (3(3–1))/2 = 3. Four people have six channels, five people have ten, and so on. As the number of people communicating increases above three, the number of communications channels increases rapidly. Project managers should try to limit the size of teams or sub teams to avoid making communications too complex. 4. What is performance reporting? What are some methods used for performance reporting? ANSWER: Performance reporting keeps stakeholders informed about how resources are being used to achieve project objectives. It also motivates workers to have some progress to report. Progress reports can be considered as a super tool —a tool that is extensively used and has been found to improve project performance. Performance reports are normally provided as status reports or progress reports. Many people use the two terms interchangeably, but some people distinguish between them as follows: Progress reports describe what the project team has accomplished during a certain period. Many projects have each team member prepare a monthly or sometimes weekly progress report. Team leaders often create consolidated progress reports based on the information received from team members. Status reports describe where the project stands at a specific point in time. Status reports address where the project stands in terms of meeting scope, time, and cost goals. How much money has been spent to date? How long did it take to do certain tasks? Is work being accomplished as planned? Status reports can take various formats depending on the stakeholders’ needs. Forecasts predict future project status and progress based on past information and trends. How long will it take to finish the project based on how things are going? How much more money will be needed to complete the project? Project managers can also use earned value management to answer these questions by estimating the budget at completion and projected completion date based on how the project is progressing. Another important technique for performance reporting is the status review meeting. Status review meetings are a good way to highlight information provided in important project documents, empower people to be accountable for their work, and have face-to-face discussions about important project issues. Many program and project managers hold periodic status review meetings to exchange important project information and motivate people to make progress on their parts of the project. Likewise, many top managers hold monthly or quarterly status review meetings where program and project managers must 5. What are the guidelines for conducting effective meetings? ANSWER: •Determine if a meeting can be avoided. Do not have a meeting if there is a better way to achieve the objective at hand. •Define the purpose and intended outcome of the meeting. Be specific about what should happen as a result of the meeting. Is the purpose to brainstorm ideas, provide status information, or solve a problem? Make the purpose of a meeting very clear to all meeting planners and participants. •Determine who should attend the meeting. Many meetings are most effective with the minimum number of participants possible, especially if decisions must be made. •Provide an agenda to participants before the meeting. Meetings are most effective when the participants come prepared. •Prepare handouts and visual aids, and make logistical arrangements ahead of time. By creating handouts and visual aids, you must organize thoughts and ideas. This usually helps the entire meeting run more effectively. •Run the meeting professionally. Introduce people, restate the purpose of the meeting, and state any ground rules that attendees should follow. •Set the ground rules for the meeting. State up front how the meeting will be run. •Build relationships. Depending on the culture of the organization and project, it may help to build relationships by making meetings fun experiences.