It may be too much to say a communications plan is the key to success, but certainly not having one is going to cause everyone much unneeded stress. This communication plan is not the internal plan of status reporting, issue resolution and periodic updates, it’s for your stakeholders whoever they may be.
If you have never created a communication plan, here’s the short list of things to consider;
- start with a strategy – what are you communicating
- create an objective – what are the concrete goals for the communication plan
- identify your audience – there may be several different groups
- develop the key messages – the key messages usually are the same no matter how many audiences you have
- identify the communication channels
- deliver and assess
Now that you have your plan, and you are working the plan, let’s talk about what benefits you will see.
When you are communicating the right information to the right people, in the right way, everyone has the opportunity to understand the project. Note, I said they have the opportunity, not that they will understand. For the people who still require help you also have consistent messaging to use.
When you focus on communication it becomes easier to find your audience and align the messaging. If there is no plan for what and how to communicate, often you find yourself pulling communications together on demand and finding the closest channel rather than the right channel.
Planning early for communication allows you to set measures for communication success and that allows you to adjust the communications if it’s not meeting the objectives.
Having a schedule to communicate can sometimes help meet a goal or get a decision tied down. Why? Because when you have a plan your driver is to get information into the communication. When you don’t have a plan, there may be no driver, and communication gets delayed rather than driven.
Do you have any thoughts on communication planning?
If you would like a template for a communication plan, send me an email, and I’ll forward one to you.
Happy PMing
Perry
Tags: communication, project challenges, success, Teams