Project communication – Getting Started

Communication is an important part of a project but many projects don’t really have a plan for communication activity.  Often, it is expected that the project manager will “just deal with it”.  That approach works for many smaller projects but, as projects get larger, the effort of dealing with ad hoc communication actually causes interruptions that can cause real difficulties with overall project progress.

Once the outline plan is in place with the requirements, key milestones and critical tasks identified, we can discover what communication the project needs: when the team need information and when there will be news about the project.  The organisational context must be considered: are there times to communicate and times when other communication means you need to stay silent as a project? Now there needs to be some thinking to build the projects communication plan.

This is the start of a mini-series on project communication.  Comments and experiences welcome!