How to Create a Project Communication Plan?

How to Create a Project Communication Plan?

In project management, one of the most productive ways of maintaining shareholders and teams aligned is through a communication plan. Though this strategy seems simple, sharing information with everyone consistently and accurately does need a plan. Without one, things can go out of hand, and shareholders can become confused and unhappy.

With that, let’s start our blog with a few concepts of project communication plans before landing on creating the same.

What is Project Communication Plan?

It is the method of investing in how communication will occur between shareholders and team, be it on a project or in an organization. In simpler words, we could say a project communication plan is a formal process of sharing information done by project managers.

This technique includes the creation of communication systems and operational orders to follow. This may sound monotonous, but it is a creative method for some.

Why Project Communication Plan?

Effective communication is necessary as breakdowns often occur when goals are not organized, emails get lost, and suitable tools aren’t created. A project communication plan is essential as it helps get clients, freelancers, shareholders, and team members on the same page.

And if you are wondering how these plans fail, then the answer is due to improper information on project scope or excessive discussion on the project. According to a PMI survey, 30 percent of respondents identified poor communication as the main reason for project failure and scope gap.

A communication plan also creates professional boundaries. For instance, your shareholders would like to limit the communication to email, whereas your freelancers might be comfortable with texting when time becomes a significant factor.

Here are a few points that will give you an idea of why a project communication plan is necessary:

• Increases productivity during meetings or eradicates them altogether
• Develops written documentation that the team can easily refer to or find
• Increase the visibility of stakeholders into the project and its progress
• Sets expectations of when shareholders will receive project updates
• Offers the choice for shareholders to provide feedback that helps them identify issues at an early stage and minimize wastage of work.

So, if you want the project to be successfully completed within time and budget, it is necessary to know how to make an effective communication plan.

Basic Elements of Project Communication Plan

According to the project, individual communication plans are different; however, all effective strategies have a scope, contact details, and more. Some of the essential elements of a project communication plan include:

Project Type

For easy reference and finding, the first thing to do is name the project. Imagine the duration of the project and the number of people involved while creating a meeting and updating the schedule. Massive projects will need different and frequent meetings.

Determine Key Players

Identify the individual communicating the type of information they are sharing, followed by the person responsible for the update.

Contact Details

To make communication more accessible and more effective, it is essential to organize the contact information for shareholders and teammates.

Frequency of Communication

Create a schedule of how you will be sharing certain kinds of details. It is always essential to keep the project updated once a week. You don't want to create a flood of emails that people might lose or that can engulf them. It is better to keep the communication short and perfect.

Some suggest using a survey at the beginning of the project to identify your shareholder's preferred communication types and frequencies.

Communication Types

There are different ways for you to communicate regarding a project. For instance, some information is essential to be shared at the moment; hence it is better to communicate through meetings, phone calls or video calls. On the other hand, sometimes, it is ideal to use asynchronous methods such as company message boards and email.

Project Size and Scope

Unique projects have different communication needs. It is essential to use a project scope template to define your project to determine the requirements. Once the scope is identified, consider suitable types of communication, especially for C-level shareholders.

Communication Objectives

For specific procedures to repeat or modify, look at the previous projects. Make sure to consider your findings from prior lessons learned to ensure that you are creating and executing top-notch practices.

What are the Types of Communication?

Effective communication is of utmost significance for the successful completion of a project. Several projects are executed by teams that communicate primarily via virtual networks, hence called virtual teams.

To avoid misinformation that can harm trust and to include teammates, the project team must need a communication plan for timely interactions. Here the types of communications are divided into 2 broad categories that can be leveraged in your project team.

Synchronous Communications

What is synchronous communication? It is the exchange of information that happens at the same time. An example of synchronous communications is:

• Live meeting
• Telephonic Call
• Skype conference
• Computer-assisted conference
• Video conference
• Instant messaging (IM)
• Text messaging

As we are familiar with our planet transforming into a digital world, modern communication technologies make it easier to assemble project teams from any part of the globe.

Now, most individuals work during daylight

hours that make synchronous meetings difficult if the participants are not from the same time zones. Hence, it is crucial to remember time zones and calculate them to avoid missing important deadlines or conferences.

Asynchronous Communications

When people of virtual teams are spread across different time zones, getting a group together simultaneously is a tedious and challenging task. Several communication types don't need the participants to be present simultaneously, and this type is called asynchronous communications.

Different types of asynchronous communications include:

Really Simple Syndication

Some projects are directly impacted by external sources like economic trends, scientific innovations, political elections, weather, etc. To keep informed regarding these factors, you can subscribe to e-news sources. A tech that facilitates is called Really Simple Syndication (RSS), and web pages with these tech news feeds have labelled links.

If the user clicks on the feed, the website news will be automatically sent to the user's newsreader, and they can be set to filter the information, making it relevant for the project.

Fax

For a pretty long time, the fax machine has been consistently used as they offer high-level trust for transmitting documents accurately. Though it might seem historical to use this kind of document transmission; however, in several places, fax of signed contract is legal, while that of an e-scanned image isn’t.

Mail & Package Delivery

Most countries prefer the final contract to be personally signed by an authorized entity of each party to the agreement. If more than one signature is needed, this might take weeks to get it done if the contracts are transferred via postal service.

If this process is lingering at the start of the project, you can use an overnight delivery service to reduce the time spent on document transfer.

Project Blog

As we all do know blog is an online journal that can be private, shared through invitation, or made available to the entire world. Some managers keep a journal with a summarized version of the day's challenges and decisions scribbled down.

Once the decision-making process results are known, they return to this journal later to review those decisions and take needful measures. Many project management decisions are made with incomplete knowledge and reflecting on prior decisions to establish their decision-making skills to the next level.

How to Create a Project Communication Plan?

A project communication plan can either be a simple overview or a much-detailed version. In most cases, the summary is significant for simple projects, while complex ones do need a detailed plan version.

Let us see the general steps to follow when creating a project communication plan.

Step 1: Identify the Team's Communication Needs

Different projects must have other communication plans. Consider the project scope and size, followed by the demands or requirements of your shareholder, client and your team. Keep information related to the project phase and your audience.

For instance, a project in a highly balanced market may need someone from the team for regular communication with a regulating body. However, updating content on a company's site may need customer input and contractor materials like graphic designers and photographers.

How to identify the communication needs? Well, there are two tips for it, and they are:

• Consider entire tasks, resources and activities required from a project's start-to-finish. From there, you can determine the shareholders you need to interact with. 
• Known shareholders' preferred interaction channels or techniques, how frequently they expect to receive updates, etc.

Step 2: Define Communication Purpose

There has to be a goal or a purpose for each communication event. If you are organizing a short-notice meeting, the chances are that you are disrupting people's potential to complete tasks.

Now, how to define the reason for your communication, then let's see the points below:

• Every communication plan should be updated or educate shareholders and, in some cases, acquire feedback. Before starting a project, it is vital to initiate a virtual meeting to discuss the task, answer the queries, create rapport among clients, and obtain project support. 
• A basic outline of meetings or report agendas can ensure that the sessions are practical and don't deviate from the same.

Step 3: How to Communicate

The project communication plan will determine which interaction methods to leverage for certain communication items. If you are wondering how to efficiently choose the mode of communication, then let's see:

• With affecting project productivity, keep team members in the loop. For instance, you don't need to schedule a daily meeting for updates that can be communicated through email or discussion board.
• Certain shareholders, like project sponsors, may either prefer phone or video conference to email or other methods.
• When job performance feedback, an in-person meeting is always the best. But when it comes to targeting achievement celebration or conducting project post-mortem analyses, it is better to go for a group meeting. Lastly, if your team members are in different time zones, cloud-based communication is best as it works on any device.

Step 4: Determine Communication Frequency

Too much communication often leads to project failures. For instance, if you send numerous emails, people may miss important updates due to flooded inboxes or too frequent unwanted contacts.

Tips to determine how frequently to communicates:

• The goal is to update everyone. Be it regarding the progress of the project or the weekly status report carried out through video conference, the point is that there are different methods to create a feedback loop and get everyone on the same page.
• The project sponsor may need daily updates, while that client requires weekly reports. Hence go with shareholder preference.

Step 5: Assign Communication Owners

The project manager is responsible for relaying information, i.e., from downwards to teammates, upwards to superiors, and all-around to other project shareholders. However, some communication events may have to be delegated.

Tips for assigning communication owners and audiences are:

• One must clarify who's responsible for which communication event. By doing it, you can create accountability and ensure owners have adequate time to prepare.
• Find out the audience for each communication style. This means that you don't wash people down with irrelevant and unrelated information.

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