Establishing Your Communications Plan

Reports are instrumental in effective project management. As a part of the initial project planning, you'll determine the requirements for reporting, including:

Report recipients.       Who needs to see the reports? Stakeholders throughout the organization and within the project team need to see certain reports tailored to their areas of responsibility. For example, you might generate one report for your team members , another one for team leads and resource managers, and yet another for executives and customers.

Specific content of the reports.       What type of information is included? The reports can focus on any aspect of the project, for example, tasks, resource allocation, assignments, costs, and so on. Reports might focus on past successes or current progress. They might provide a forecast of upcoming tasks , costs, or workloads. They might present a high-level summary. They can point out areas of risk or current problems that need resolution.

Frequency of report publication.       How often should you generate reports? Regularly scheduled project meetings or status reporting often drive the generation of reports. Certain important issues that are being closely watched might warrant report generation more frequently than usual. Be sure to strike a balance between providing up-to-date information often enough and overloading a stakeholder with too detailed or too frequent reporting.

Establishing your communications strategy for a project helps you effectively communicate realistic progress and estimates. You can point to unexpected changes that present risks. You can avoid larger problems and understand root causes. Specifically, with reports you can:

• Review status.

• Compare data.

• Check progress on the schedule.

• Check resource utilization.

• Check budget status.

• Watch for any potential problems looming in the future.

• Help stakeholders make decisions affecting the project.

Using the appropriate Microsoft Project views and reports on a regular basis for progress analysis and communication is a key component of effective project management. By implementing a communications plan, including regular presentations of reports to stakeholders, you can keep interested parties aware of crucial information and trends.

Project Management Practices: Communications Management

Communication is a vital element of successful project management. Effective project communication ensures that the appropriate information is generated, collected, and distributed in a timely manner to the appropriate project stakeholders. Different stakeholders need different kinds of project information ”from the team members carrying out the project tasks, to customers sponsoring the project, to executives making strategic decisions regarding the project and the organization. Your stakeholders don't just receive project information; they also generate it. When all your stakeholders share project information, people are linked and ideas are generated ”all of which contributes to the ultimate success of the project.

The first stage of effective project communications management is communications planning. This stage should take place in the initiating and planning processes for the project, in conjunction with scope and activity development. As you develop and build your project plan, you also need to determine what types of communication will be necessary throughout the life of the project.

Determine what tools you have at your disposal and how your project team communicates most effectively. You might have weekly meetings and weekly status reports. Perhaps you'll also have monthly resource management and cost management reviews. Other possible communication vehicles include presentations, e-mail, letters , and an intranet site. You'll likely use a combination of these vehicles for different aspects of project management and different audiences.

If you're using Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 and Microsoft Office Project Web Access 2003, you have a very effective and targeted means of communicating electronically with your team members and other stakeholders. You can automate the flow of progress information about the project, including status reporting. You'll post certain views of the project periodically to Project Web Access 2003 for all stakeholders to review. If you're also using Windows SharePoint Services with your Project Server 2003 implementation, you can store reports, manage risks, and track issues.

While the project is being executed, you'll be executing your communications plan. You'll report on current project status, describing where the project stands at that point in time, especially as it relates to the schedule, budget, scope, and resource utilization. You'll also report on overall progress, describing the accomplishments of the project team to date and what is yet to be done. Finally, you'll make forecasts by using project plan information to predict future progress on tasks and anticipating potential problems.

Tasks will be completed, milestones met, deliverables handed off, and phases concluded. Your communications management strategy provides the means for documenting project results and the receipt of deliverables as each stage of the project is completed.