Importance of Communication

As a student that is passionate enough about communication to major in it, I see a lot of parallels in project management that makes proper communication a necessity for success. Despite the largely acknowledged importance of communication, many projects still fail due to bad communication. As a project manager, what can you do to address this before it becomes an issue in your projects?

Communication Breakdown

Nearly everyone has heard the famous movie quote from the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke in which the characters say multiple times: What we've got here is a failure to communicate. This quote has undoubtably been used in many failed projects as well. In fact, we learned in class today that one of the greatest threats to the success of any project is the failure to communicate.

With that said, a project manager and the team should construct a Communication Management Plan, which is a document that guides project communications. This document should address many topics related to communication, starting with but not limited to:

  • Stakeholder communications requirements
  • Information to be communicated, including format, content, and level of detail
  • Identification of who will receive the information and who will produce it
  • Suggested methods or guidelines for conveying information
  • Description of the frequency of communication
  • Escalation procedures for resolving issues
  • Revision procedures for updating the communications management plan
  • A glossary of common terminology used on the project

This document is absolutely vital, and as you can see, should be quite detailed.

Furthermore, project managers play an important role in ensuring that communication channels remain open. A good project manager should ask people what info they need and when, as well as work to customize communication standards within the organization to fit the needs of the project. Additionally, all involved in a project should be aware that communication is two-sided (often to and from a stakeholder). Also worth noting is that as the number of people involved in a project increases, the complexity of communications increases with it.

Therefore, it is worth spending adequate time learning about communication practices and always striving to improve your ability to communicate. Perhaps I picked a good major after all!