Communication is the process of exchanging information, ideas, thoughts, feelings, or messages between individuals or groups. It involves both verbal and nonverbal elements and can take various forms, including spoken or written language, gestures, body language, facial expressions, and visual aids.
Effective communication is essential for conveying meaning accurately and ensuring mutual understanding between the sender and the receiver. It plays a critical role in all aspects of human interaction, including personal relationships, social interactions, business transactions, education, and professional settings.
Effective Communication is vital for project success as it promotes shared understanding, stakeholder engagement, problem-solving, risk management, decision-making, conflict resolution, resource optimization, quality assurance, adaptability, and stakeholder satisfaction. Project managers and teams should prioritize communication throughout the project lifecycle to maximize its benefits and minimize potential challenges.
Below are some of the steps I think necessary to achieve effective communication. These are by no means complete steps to set meaningful communication environment in the project and certainly the opinion and setup around it can vary based on experience and need.
Identify Stakeholders:
By identifying stakeholders, you gain insights into their interests, expectations, and concerns related to the project. This understanding helps you tailor communication and engagement strategies to meet stakeholders' needs effectively. Different stakeholders may have varying expectations regarding project scope, timelines, deliverables, and outcomes. Identifying stakeholders allows you to manage these expectations proactively and mitigate potential conflicts or misunderstandings. Stakeholder identification establishes accountability by clarifying who is responsible for contributing to the project's success and who may be impacted by its outcomes. This clarity helps ensure that all relevant parties fulfill their roles and responsibilities effectively.Effective communication and collaboration are essential for project success. Identifying stakeholders enables you to establish communication channels, disseminate information, and foster collaboration among diverse groups with varying interests and perspectives.
You can identify stakeholders by taking following steps, there can be more ways to do so. This is something I do regularly.
a. Review Project Documentation, such as the project charter, SharePoint and confluence page, requirements documents, and stakeholder registers from similar projects. This can provide insights into who the stakeholders might be based on past experiences.
b. Consult Subject Matter Experts Speak with subject matter experts (SMEs) who have knowledge about the project domain. They can help identify stakeholders who may not be immediately obvious but have a significant impact on the project's success.
c. Analyzing Organizational Charts Review organizational charts to identify individuals or departments that may have a stake in the project. Consider both internal and external stakeholders, including clients, vendors, regulatory bodies, etc.
d. Use Stakeholder Analysis Techniques Utilize stakeholder analysis techniques such as stakeholder mapping, power/interest grids, or salience models to systematically identify and prioritize stakeholders based on their importance and influence.
Create a Communication Plan :
A communication plan ensures that all project stakeholders receive consistent and clear messages regarding project goals, progress, changes, and expectations. This clarity helps minimize misunderstandings and confusion. A communication plan ensures that communication efforts are aligned with the project's objectives and goals. It helps prioritize information dissemination and focus communication efforts on areas critical to project success.A communication plan outlines procedures for identifying, escalating, and addressing issues and concerns raised by stakeholders, thereby reducing the likelihood of project delays or failures.Clear and timely communication is essential for effective decision-making. A communication plan ensures that decision-makers have access to relevant information when needed, facilitating informed and timely decisions that drive the project forward.
You can include below points in the communication plan. There can be more field based on the project industry, project size, project duration, etc.
a. Define Objectives Clearly articulate the objectives of your communication plan. What are the goals you aim to achieve through communication? Examples include keeping stakeholders informed, resolving conflicts, aligning team members, etc.
b. Select Communication Channels Choose appropriate communication channels based on the preferences and requirements of stakeholders. Common channels include email, meetings, project management software, messaging apps, video conferencing, etc.
c. Set Communication Frequency Determine how often communication will occur and which stakeholders need to be communicated with regularly. Establish a schedule for regular updates, progress reports, meetings, etc.
d. Assign Responsibilities Clearly define who is responsible for communication tasks within the project team. Assign roles such as communication coordinator, meeting facilitator, content creator, etc. Ensure that everyone understands their responsibilities and deadlines.
Communication template :
Using a communication template ensures consistency in the format, structure, and tone of communication across various messages and stakeholders. This consistency helps maintain professionalism and clarity in all project-related communications.Communication templates save time by providing pre-defined frameworks that can be easily customized for different purposes. Rather than starting from scratch with each communication, project managers and team members can simply fill in the relevant details, streamlining the process.Communication templates help reduce the likelihood of errors or omissions in important project-related messages. By providing prompts and guidelines, templates ensure that key information is included and communicated accurately.
Below is the example of a very simple email template that I used in one of the recent projects. Certainly you can reduce or increase the fields based on your needs. I prefer to keep it simple and short so the communication is up to point and easy to refer if needed in future. Similarly there can be a template for meetings, reports, dashboards, presentation, etc which are other mediums of effective communication.
a. Subject :
make sure to keep the meeting agenda as short and clear as possible. I have seen people write long subject lines with details those should have been mentioned in the body of the mail.
Bad example of subject line : "Meeting for discussion on design and use cases for the upcoming project xxx having launch date around End of Sept 2024 from the YYY team"
Good example of subject line : "MoM 14th March 2024 : Project xxx Design and Use Case Discussion"
b. Body:
b.1 Project timelines for Non-Prod and Prod setup - if available
Normally in IT projects there are two separate environments. Testing environment (non-prod) to verify the project deliverables before they go in actual customer facing environment (Prod). Highlighting these timelines sets the deadline for each team/stakeholder to be ready with their respective deliverables.
b.2 Risks and mitigation plan - if available
Highlighting the risk gives stakeholders the correct pictures of possible impediments and possible ways around it. This can change as the project progresses.
b.3 Documentation links
I consider this as very important point as it becomes a single source of truth for the project details for each an every team and stakeholder. Absence of this can lead to multiple version about project design, use cases, teams involved, etc which can lead to serious confusion.
b.4 Agreed points (technical & business) - to be added later to documents on design/use case/risk register/etc
I always stress on mentioning even a minute details in this section from the meeting. Even though the point can be universally known and seem to be implicitly understood by everybody. But I advocate that nothing in the project should be assumption based. Even though it can be a standard assumption but still it should be mentioned in this section. For example : software and access needed to the team, although it can be known to everybody that team will need certain software and access to get ready the project deliverables, mentioning it explicitly here will make everybody aware about the necessities of the team and at the same time if anything is missing from it can be quickly then arranged.
b.5 Open points and action on with dates (queries/concerns/doubts)
Here we should mention about the points those were raised considering them as important for the projects' success but does not have answer at the moment. Also mentioning team/person's name - who would help us get those answers - should also be highlighted along with the date when this answer is expected.
b.6 Next meeting date and time
This will again set the expectation for the team/stakeholder when the answer/outcome/findings/etc is expected from them. This will also help people and team to set aside time in future for the meeting if they are required in it.
Hope this is helpful for you all and might find some leads from this writing to implement effective communication ways for your respective project. At the same time please do share the ways you implemented in your past or on-going project to have meaningful communication for others to learn from you.
Thank you