IT Project Communication Management

Project Communication Management Overview

• Communication involves exchanging information between individuals using a shared system of symbols, signs, or behaviors.

Effective Communication in IT Projects

• A communication gap often exists between technical team members and nontechnical individuals inside and outside a team.
• Some individuals with technical training may lack adequate communication skills.
• The nature of IT is constantly changing, with new devices and jargon emerging.
• These factors can create barriers between technical and nontechnical individuals.
• Communication challenges include a lack of skills and constant changes in technologies.
• Communication requires a sender, receiver, agreement on interpretation, and feedback.

Communication Processes (PMBOK)

• Communication planning involves identifying stakeholders, their information needs, when they need it, and the delivery format.
• Information distribution executes the communication plan and responds to ad-hoc requests.
• Performance reporting collects and distributes project performance information to stakeholders.
• Administrative closure is the careful documentation of a project or phase at its end.

Communication Planning

• Communication plans identify stakeholders, their information needs, timings, and format.
• Includes when and how the project team will provide written and oral reports.
• Includes how team members will coordinate their work and announcements regarding milestones.
• The plan specifies information to be shared with external stakeholders like vendors and contractors.
• Key questions to address when creating a communication plan include:
  • Who the stakeholders are.
  • The information each needs.
  • How often and when will they receive it.
  • Where the information will come from.
  • Who is responsible for verifying its accuracy.
  • Who will organize the information and what is the format.
  • Who is the stakeholder's main contact.

Emergency Communication

• Plans should also address communication in various emergency situations:
  • Natural disasters (fires, floods, hurricanes, etc.).
  • Man-made disasters (chemical leaks, threats, etc.).
  • Technology disasters (network downtime, outages, security breaches).

Information Distribution

• Involves executing the communication plan and addressing ad hoc information requests from stakeholders.
• Considers what information to share (work results, project plans), where to share it (vertically, horizontally), and the format (written, oral, formal, informal).

Communication Formats

• Written formats: letters, memos, reports, emails, instant messages.
• Oral formats: formal presentations, informal conversations.
• Non-verbal: body language and clothing choices.

Communication Method Effectiveness

• The effectiveness of a communication method depends on the purpose.
• Oral communication is often effective for reprimanding team members or settling a dispute.
• Written communication is sometimes effective for future action or for directives regarding policy changes.
• Written communication in conjunction with oral communication is often effective for quick action or when providing an overview.

Communication Style

• Formal: Governed by convention, custom and culture; structured, with defined standards determined by authority, rank, and information type.
• Informal: Unstructured, with varying information accuracy, supplements formal communication.
• Vertical: Between higher and lower organizational levels; upward communication is to one, downward is to many, and more formal.
• Horizontal: Across departments or organizations; less formal.

Formal and Informal Communication

• Project team communication varies from informal chats and problem-solving meetings to business lunches, team meetings, and video conferences.

Performance Reporting

• Performance reporting involves collecting and distributing project performance information to shareholders, enabling them to understand the project status at any time.
• Status reports provide current project information.
• Progress reports detail team accomplishments to date.
• Forecast reports predict the project's future status or progress.

Administrative Closure

• Administrative closure involves detailed documentation of a project or project phase at its termination.
• Natural termination occurs when the project is planned to end.
• Unnatural termination occurs due to multiple unplanned causes.

Being an Effective Communicator

• Requires running effective meetings.
• Relies on making effective presentations.
• Emphasizes being a good listener.
• Involves the use of templates.
• Requires one to conduct walkthroughs.

Meeting Benefits

• Meetings define the project, team roles, and stakeholders.
• They provide forums for revising project details and clarifying aspects.
• Meetings allow team members to understand how their contributions fit into the project.
• Meetings increase team commitment and productivity through collaboration and clear task assignments.
• Meetings enable leadership to display vision, and members to show their skills and commitment.

Running an Effective Meeting

• Meeting ineffectiveness roots from inadequate notification and preparation along with no agenda.
• Other issues include the wrong or too many attendees, lack of control, outside pressures, and a lack of follow up.

Meeting Guidelines

• Before the meeting: define its purpose set ground rules, invite only essential individuals, pre-notify people of relevant details, distribute the agenda and materials in advance.
• During the meeting: start/end on time, specify the purpose, gather information effectively, stay focused, use visual aids, summarize discussions to promote agreements and resolve disagreements, assign action items with deadlines.
• After the meeting: professionally prepare and distribute minutes including time, place, attendees/roles, agenda, decisions, action items, next meetings, and circulate for corrections before final distribution.

Meeting Ground Rules

• Start and end on time.
• Arrive on time and prepared to participate.
• Follow an agenda, unless deviation is broadly agreed.
• Notify the leader in case of a scheduling conflict, or the need to arrive late or to leave early.
• Actively participate while listening, respecting the opinions of others.
• Refrain from side-discussions during the team conference.
• Achieve concensus.
• Keep members on topic.
• Include breaks for longer sessions.

Effective Presentations

• Planning involves understanding the audience, message, and environment.
• Design involves organizing content logically, keeping slides simple and consistent, using variety, reviewing for errors, using visuals without distracting from the message, and providing supplemental materials at the right time.
• Delivery involves practice, software knowledge, having a backup plan, and proper public speaking skills.

Presentation Planning

• Consider the audience, their knowledge of/education level regarding the presentation topic to design the most effective presentation
• The presentation should be designed with a particular objective in mind.
• Knowledge of the room size, shape, lighting aids in designing an optimal presentation.

Presentation Design

• Orginize so that topics follow sequentially with minimal randomization.
• Keep the presentation simple with minimal visual noise and few slides, only including what is needed.
• Be consistent with colors, fonts, design etc.
• Use both graphical and visual slides to convey information.
• Always double check the slides for spelling mistakes.
• Use bells and whistles sparingly
• Remember to use them at the right moment - like, distribute handouts only when you want your audience to look at them.

Presentation Delivery

• Test slides before.
• Arrive early and ready your presentation ahead of time for the audiences arrival.
• Use special keys.
• Have a backup plan incase of technology malfunction or if your presentation is lost during travel.
• Practice public speaking.
• Keep a clean personal apperance.

Effective Listening

• Listening involves hearing, understanding, remembering, and acting.
• Avoid evaluating or anticipating; take notes, listen for themes, and don't fake attention.

Good Listening

• Active listeners do not interrupt and pay close attention unlike poor listeners.
• Good listeners ask for clarification.
• Good listeners verify understanding before providing feedback.

Communication Templates

• Communication templates ensure that all formal documents follow a standard layout and required information.

Walkthroughs

• A walkthrough represents a peer review of products created during system development.
• Applications include project scope statements, budget/schedule reviews, specifications, designs, code, test results, and documentation.

Collaboration Technologies

• Collaboration technologies can vary based on communication methods.
• Communication methods include face-to-face, video / audio conference, email, instant messenger and written mail.
• Communications may be synchronous or asynchrounous, depending on if interaction occurs in real time.

Electronic Meeting Systems

• Electronic meeting systems consist of networked personal computers using software for problem solving, decisions, and electronic voting.

Groupware

• Groupware is a class of software enhancing teamwork.
• It operates over two dimensions: synchronous/asynchronous and face-to-face.

Benefits of Groupware

• There are several benefits to utilising groupware. They include:
• Process structuring helps members stay on task.
• Parallelism enables more people to participate.
• Group size facilitates larger teams.
• There is group memory for comments and ideas.
• It allows easier access to external files and external information.
• Spanning enables remote collaboration.
• There is anonymity in the event a sensitive topic is at hand.

Enterprise Project Management

• The focus is on portfolio management for resource allocation and risk analysis.
• Provides closer resource tracking, workload management, and better plan development.
• Manages stakeholder expectations by reporting the project's timeline and resources utilized.
• Standardizes organizational best practices and processes while supporting team participation through project updates.
• Controls deliverables under central document repository, which are edited under version control.