Communication Management Plan

When managing a project, the way formal communication are handled, is quite important.

Here you can find the characteristics that I believe should be specified when preparing a communication plan, for every document or any other communication media.

These characteristics will then be specified in the “communication matrix” which is usually attached to the communication plan.


 * Scope/Object of communication. In a project there is the need of periodical status report. Maybe it is needed to update on project policies or change management processes. Every formal communication that happen within a project should be regulated and listed in the communication plan.


 * Purpose. For each communication channel (i.e. document or meeting) you list in your plan, you need a brief explanation of the document’s or meeting’s purpose. You want to answer why the communication is needed and under what conditions.


 * Frequency. By writing down the expectations, you ensure that all stakeholders understand how often communication is needed. Defining when milestones are due is essential to the process because you can measure the accuracy of the cost and time baselines to date, and the overall project status.You may also want to set up conditional reporting to establish that when specified conditions are met, individuals should report accordingly.


 * Medium/Channel. It is possible to communicate via report, via e-mail, workflow tools or meeting. What is important is that we specify the format for the communication. Some times it is better a written document, some others a simple e-mail. There’s no right or wrong way to present information, but the preferences and reasons for the modality have to be documented in your plan. For example, you may request that your project team members complete a weekly status report of their assignments in a Microsoft Word form and e-mail it to you. But (and here’s the rub), at each project status meeting the team members should bring the Word document in hard copy so they can use it to verbally review their progress. To save your sanity, you have each team member submit status reports prior to the meeting so you have all the reports at the status meeting. And it’s all documented in your plan.


 * Audience. Every report or meeting will have its own audience. There is no sense in inviting to a meeting people not interested in it, as there is no sense to send a document to someone is not interested in receiving it and in improving it.


 * Duration. Sometimes the communication will happen periodically along the whole project, while in some other cases it could be limited to a period of time or even a single event. In the communication plan we should specify it.


 * Responsibility. One common misunderstanding is that the project manager is responsible for every piece of communication.That’s just nottrue. The project manager is responsible to ensure that communication takes place, but he can’t be responsible for the actual communicating. For example, if an expert is hired to take care of some aspects of the project, it is important that he communicates with the team leaders (and maybe not all). It will be the project manager responsibility to facilitate the communication and to verify that they will happen profitably, but the communications will be responsibility of the team leaders. Sometime it will be important to distinguish between the responsible for the production (e.g. team leaders) and the responsible for the scheduling (e.g. PMO).