Planning Communication for Governance
5 August 2010 2 Comments
The first part of the planning should be about responsibilities and governance. If this is decided early, then the decision-making process is easier when the project is under pressure.
- Who is responsible for the expenditure on communication?
- Who must authorise any external communications?
- Who looks after the data protection aspects of external communication?
- Is there an organisational brand or style that should be used?
- Is there a master communication plan for the organisation that the project must fit in with?
- How is the work of the Marketing and Communication teams, project sponsors, programme management and project management coordinated?
- Are there other projects’ communication plans that contact the same stakeholders - how are schedule conflicts to be managed?
- Are there times when communication with those outside the organisation is suspended (just before elections or official announcements to shareholders, busy time because there is seasonal work to focus on)?
If these things are known and in the plan, it is easier to make detailed plans and do the work for planned communication and deal with the unplanned issues.
The project manager will also need to plan for the communication associated with project governance.
- How long before a meeting does the board need the papers on a project?
- Who must be included in project governance communication?
About 3triangles
Good to see ths focus from you Carol. I agree with it and would add that alot of stakeholder communication needs to be overseen if not undertaken by the Sponsor. Also, for the increasingly common multi-owned projects additional factors such as noted in the APM’s publication Co-Directing Change need to be taken into account.
See you at a forthcoming GovSIG meeting. The next is on 8 September 2010.
Thanks David, how true. I’m sure we’d agree that absentee sponsors can’t effectively communicate with stakeholders and the project team because they can’t understand enough about the project to be part of the discussion – that in turn means they filter information that could be vital to project success.
For those interested in the Governance of Project Management Special Interest Group, more information (and details of the useful APM guides) can be found at http://www.apm.org.uk/Governance/