Project Communications Management
Project Communications Management plays a key role in keeping all members of the project management team on the same page. Without communication among all team members and project stakeholders there can be a breakdown in processes which could have a negative impact on the final product.
The project manager must know the communication processes involved in effective project management. First of all there should be planning to determine what information needs to be communicated to all stakeholders in the project. Next, that information must be made readily available to the stakeholders and generated in a timely fashion. Performance must also be accounted for by reporting the project status, measuring progress and forecasting. Finally, communication with project stakeholders must be managed so that all requirements are met and issues are promptly resolved. Interactions and overlap among the communication processes are inevitable and expected throughout all phases of project management
Project Communications Management can be broken down into essential knowledge and skills as follows:
- Managing a meeting by having an agenda as well as resolving conflict
- Writing style to be used
- Method of communication; written or oral, informal memo or formal report, face-to-face or email, all of which are dependent on the situation at hand
- Techniques for presentation including whether to use visual aids and effective use of body language
- Possible barriers or feedback loops that influence communication
There are also several key components in project communication management which should be considered. Encoding or translation makes sure everyone understands what is said. The output of that encoding is the message which is conveyed through a medium. Interference with the message is called noise and finally, the message must be decoded to have meaning for all involved.
This term is defined in the 3rd and the 4th edition of the PMBOK.
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