Development Cooperation Handbook/Designing and Executing Projects/Communication Management

The 9 Topic Areas Of Project Management Knowledge

Communication Management

Communication is one of the 9 topic areas of project management knowledge. Communication is essential to organisational life as it enables knowledge sharing, decision making, and performance. Effective communication engages employees in the culture and objectives of the organisation. It promotes teamwork and understanding. In order to manage programmes that are effective in achieving desired Impacts, effective communication in the organisation is essential.

Project Communication Management is the systematic planning, implementing, monitoring, and revision of the communication channels between the project team and the project stakeholders.

Project Communications Management has to employ "processes to ensure timely and appropriate generation, collection, distribution, storage, retrieval, and ultimate disposition of project information". The main task of these processes is " to provide the critical links among people and information that are necessary for successful communication" (comp. PMBOK3, p. 221).

When we communicate with colleagues, partners and external stakeholders, we enable informed decisions and give visibility to sponsors. In the development cooperation environment, "to communicate" is mainly to "build agreement" on how to achieve common objectives and how to reciprocally support and empower action partners. The sincerity and authenticity of communication are therefore the main drivers of successful development cooperation actions. (more in ⇒ "Cooperation and Communication"" the theoretical section of this handbook.

Most of the task manager's time is actually devoted to communication. The project manager spends an average of 90% of her time in communicating. Proper communication management is therefore essential for avoiding communication overload, which is the main driver of ineffectiveness of otherwise well conceived projects.

As organisations and institutions become "project based", there is an ever greater need to manage communication in a manner that supports and facilitates project management. The project team needs frequent information from each of its team members to complete and improve the project and to understand the needs and expectations of the project's beneficiaries. Project communication management aims at responding to communication requirements by generating, storing and disseminating project information in a timely and appropriate manner.

As in all professional activities, planning is necessary for achieving quality results. Through communication planning, we can better identify and manage project communication requirements. If we start planning communication right from the very beginning of project life, then we will be able to involve project stakeholders in the participated process of decision making and project outputs will align to needs of all actors involved.

Subsections of this chapter

 * Communication Planning
 * Identify communication stakeholders
 * Analyse the communication needs of each stakeholder
 * Identify the information for fulfilling the information needs of each stakeholder
 * Identify the Method and the Effort Required
 * Prioritize the Communication Options
 * Develop a Conflict Management Strategy


 * Project information distribution


 * Listening and Feedback


 * Addressing misunderstanding


 * Planning and executing a communication action for promoting awareness

Tools
Communication Plan







Guideline: How team members can improve overall project communication

How team members can improve overall project communication