Points to Remember: Project Communication Management

90% of a project manager’s job is communication

Communications Management makes sure everybody gets the right message at the right time.

Stakeholder Analysis is a critical tool in Project Communication Management process. You need to interview all of the stakeholders you can find for your project and find out the value the project has for them. As you sit with stakeholders, you’ll identify more people to interview. During Stakeholder Analysis you can divide your stakeholders into groups based on their level of involvement and need for communication. When you understand what motivates all of your stakeholders, you can come up with a strategy to make sure that they’re told about the things that they find important, and that they’re not bored with extraneous details.

It’s not enough to know who your stakeholders are – you need to understand what motivates them, and what it will take it to make the project a success for each of them. That’s where the Stakeholder Management Strategy comes in.

Be careful about when you use different kinds of communication. Any time you need to get a message to a client or sponsor, you use formal communication. Meetings are always informal verbal, even if the meeting is to say something really important. And any project document—like a project management plan, a requirements specification, or especially a contract—is always formal written.

You do most of the project communication when you’re performing the Distribute Information process

It’s important to write down the good things you learned on the project, too. That way, you can be sure to repeat your successes next time. Another important aspect of this action is the fact that, other projects can learn about the best practicies from your experience and implement them.

There are only four communication types; formal written, informal written, formal verbal, and informal verbal. For the test, you need to be able to tell which is which.

Report Performance takes the outputs from the Executing process in Distribute Information and turns them into Performance Reports and Forecasts.

Performance reports and forecasts are a lot easier than they look—because you already know all about them! In the chapter on Project Cost Management, you learned how to use CPI and SPI to measure your project’s performance, and you used EAC and ETC to forecast when the project would be complete. Now you’re just taking that information and communicating it!

A kickoff meeting is a great way to get your project team and stakeholders on the same page.

You should add all of your performance reports to the Organizational Process Assets so that project managers on future projects can use them as historical information.


Points to Remember - Other Topics:

Introduction to Projects & Project Management
Relationship Between Knowledge Areas & Process Groups
Project Integration Management
Project Scope Management
Project Time Management
Project Cost Management
Project Quality Management
Human Resource Management
Project Risk Management
Project Procurement Management
Ethics & Professional Responsibility