Journey of Communication

Communications

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Check your understanding

What is the Major job of a PM?

a) Communicaiton
b) Cost management
c) Team management
d) Risk Management
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Project
Communications
ü Consider these dimensions:
ü Internal and external stakeholders
ü Formality or informality - content and
format
ü Hierarchy – adjust tone upward,
downward, or horizontally
ü Official or unofficial need e.g. annual
reports or governance related vs.
project team communication
ü Written or verbal – remember tone,
inflection, and nonverbal gestures are
influential!

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Communications Management Plan

DEFINITION
A component of the project, program, or portfolio
management plan that describes how, when, and
by whom information about the project will be
administered and disseminated.

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Communications Management
Plan - Components

ü Stakeholder communications requirements

ü Information to be communicated, including
language to be used
ü Reason
ü Time frame and frequency
ü Responsible person – i.e. release of confidential
information
ü Receivers
ü Methods or technologies of conveyance
ü Time and budget allocation
ü Escalation process for issues that need visibility
ü Update method for the plan
ü Glossary of common terminology
ü Flowcharts depicting flow of information
ü Constraints due to regulation or policies

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Communications Management Plan Example
Communication Frequency Responsibility Stakeholder Notes

Project Kickoff Start of Both team and client kickoff

PMO Key Stakeholders
Meeting project meetings recommended
Includes project schedule, key
project deliverables, meeting
Extranet Ongoing PMO
minutes, change request log,
issues log
Monthly –
first Review status, milestones met,
Executive Steering
Wednesday Account Manager Client Executive earned value indicators, key
Committee
of each issues
month
Status Meetings Weekly – Review project status, schedule,
Project Manager Client Sponsor
Status Report (Email) Friday 2 p.m. change requests, issues
Weekly –
Provides input for subsequent
Status Meetings Friday 11 Project Manager Development Team
meetings with client sponsor
a.m.
Weekly –
Newsletter (Email) PMO Client Managers
Friday
Monthly/end Account Informal (Monthly)
Client Satisfaction Client Sponsor/Key
of each Manager/Project
Survey Client Stakeholders Formal (End of each phase)
phase Manager
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Communication
Requirements
Analysis

ü Leads to a clear articulation of the

stakeholders’ communications
needs.
ü Enables effective choices
regarding the technologies to be
recommended.
ü Takes the form of a grid,
questionnaire or survey that
documents the communications
and technology requirements for
each stakeholder.

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Check your understanding

Which Project management plan has streategies to manaage stakeholders?

• A) Communicaiton plamn

• B) Stakeholder plam

• C) Risk Plan

• D) Procurement plan

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Check your understanding

A new stakeholder has been identified, he is high power and low interest, how would you
manage them?

• A) Manage them closely

• B) Keep informed

• C) Put him in watch list

• D) Keep satisfied

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Check your understanding

A new stakeholder has been identified, his engagement level is netural and you want him to
be supportive, you have updated the stakeholder plan, what will you do next?

• A) Have a meeting with him

• B) Ask team to have meeting with him

• C) Update issue log

• D) Update communication plan

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Check your understanding

A stakeholder was involved highly in the project, but now he is less interested and wants to
receive updates only every week. What will you update

• Stakeholder register

• Stakeholder plan

• Communication plan

• Risk Register

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Communication Choices

Urgency of need for information

Availability and reliability of technology

Ease of use

Project environment

Additional security measures for sensitive or

Sensitivity and confidentiality of confidential information
information Social media policies

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Diversity and
Inclusion
Project teams are global and diverse
in culture, gender, physical ability,
language, etc.
Create an environment that optimizes
the team’s diversity and builds
climate of mutual trust.
Team development objectives should:
ü Improve trust to raise team
morale, reduce conflict, and
support teamwork.
ü Create a collaborative culture to
improve individual and team
performance and facilitate cross-
training and mentoring.
ü Empower the team to participate
in decision making and own the
solutions they create.

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Check your understanding

• A team member has never worked in a co-working environment; he is very shy to

talk to a girl. You identify it; what will you do with him?

• A) Ask HR to replace a team member

• B) Train him on diversity

• C) Change him to a project where only male works

• D) Fire him

• Note: This question can be about race, religion, language, or any other diversity,
the answer will always be the same

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Communication Types

Face-to-face
Email
Meetings

Instant Text
Fax Messaging Messaging
(IM)

Print media Video and voice Social Company

and conferencing Media website
documents (virtual meetings)

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Check your understanding

• Which type of communicaiton is most and least prefered?

• Face to face

• Video conferencing

• Call

• Email

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Communication Models

DEFINITION
A description, analogy, or schematic used to
represent how the communication process will
be performed for the project.

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Communication Model
Medium

Transmit
Message
Encode Decode
Noise
Sender Receiver
Noise Acknowledge

Decode Encode
Feedback/Response

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) – Sixth Edition, Project Management Institute,
Inc., 2017, Page 373.

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Check your understanding

• Which of them is not considered noise?

• A) Breakage of internet while talking to each other

• B) Language barrier

• C) culture barrier – different meaning of signs

• D) How loud you speak

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Communication Methods

DEFINITION
A systematic procedure, technique, or process
used to transfer information among project
stakeholders.

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Communication Methods

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Check your understanding

You have just received an email, you open it, and now you go to the youtube website and is
watching a course. Opening a tab on youtube and watching a video is which type of
communication

a) Push

b) Pull

c) Interative

d) Hybrid

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In which process, communicaiton is actually carried out?

a) Plan Communicaiton

b) Manage stakeholder

c) Manage Communicaiton

d) Direct and manage work?

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Feedback
ü Communication is a two-way
street.
ü Both critical and affirming
feedback are key.
ü Feedback can be positive if
received and understood as
intended.
ü Feedback can be negative
because of misunderstanding.
ü No feedback provides an implicit
acceptance of the message by the
receiver.
ü Effective feedback is clear,
specific, and offered in a timely
manner.

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 Check your underanding
• When communication is completed
• A) When a message is said

• B) When a message is understood

• C) When feedback is given

• D) When stakeholders agree with you

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Active Listening

Communication technique

Requires listener to provide

feed back what they heard by:
• Re-stating
• Paraphrasing
• Body language, head nodding, etc.

Confirms understanding
Knowledge Transfer In
and Between Teams

Facilitate collaboration Check the team charter

In agile projects, use
and promote visibility of for knowledge sharing information radiators to
work. methods, including: provide seamless
ü Frequency of visibility into project
Manage knowledge updates status across the
sharing among team ü Version control stakeholder community.
members, especially on
virtual teams. ü Supporting tools
and agreed
approach to their
use

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Internal and External
Team Member
Communication
ü Communicate regularly
ü Collaborate between team and external
teams or stakeholders
ü Manage expectations effectively
among stakeholders
ü Include communication protocols in
Team Charter:

- Internal: team meetings, shared

calendars, etc.

- External: stakeholder feedback,

dependency management, alignment
with goals or expectations

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Always aim to reach
agreement during
negotiations.

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Negotiation Skills
Includes internal and external
conversations towards reaching
agreements.

Determine reliable methods to ensure

communication is aimed at reaching
consensus. This keeps the team culture
healthy.

Team members might negotiate:

ü Roles and responsibilities
ü Priorities
ü Assignments

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Expert Judgment

DEFINITION Judgment based upon expertise in an

application area, knowledge area, discipline,
industry, etc., as appropriate for the activity
being performed. Such expertise may be
provided by any group or person with specialized
education, knowledge, skill, experience, or
training.

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Lessons Learned Register

DEFINITION
A project document used to record knowledge
gained during a project so that it can be used in
the current project and entered in the lessons
learned repository.

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GUIDELINES

Effectively Manage Communication

• Gather and distribute contact information for all involved parties.
• Determine the communication needs of project stakeholders.
• Tailor amount of detail and frequency to recipient needs; project team
members may require more detail on a more frequent basis. Senior
management typically requires summary information on a less frequent
basis.
• Analyze the value to the project of providing the information.
• Evaluate any constraints and assumptions to determine their possible
impact on communication planning.
• Determine the appropriate communications technologies to use for
communicating project information.
• Ensure your communications management plan includes all key elements.
• Integrate the communications management plan into the project plan.
• Distribute the plan to project stakeholders.
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Engage and Support Virtual Teams

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Virtual Teams

ü Team members share

goals but spend little or no
time meeting face-to-face.

ü Addressing their needs

takes some different skills.

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Virtual Team Considerations

Avoids
Lowers
Can find Relocation
workplace
ideal skill
costs expenses
sets

Bonding and
Enabling
Managing team dynamic
effective team
communications may be difficult
performance
to develop

Trial Focus on calendar

management,
communications Kanban boards and
technology for other information
discussion radiators
Virtual Team
Member Needs
Facilitate and ensure
collaboration as a priority.

Basic needs of a virtual team:

ü Shared goals

ü Clear purpose

ü Clarity on roles and

expectations

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Virtual Team
Member
Engagement
Manage engagement by focusing on:
ü Team dynamics

ü Transparency

ü Accountability

ü Attention to effective communication

Use videoconferencing tools to facilitate

active participation and the ability to
assess body language and tone.

Enable visibility of work and work status

with tools e.g. Kanban-style boards.

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Collaboration
Technology
Enables teams to plan, collaborate, and
communicate.

Not a substitute for team planning

activities.

Consider transparency requirements when

selecting collaboration technology.

Collaboration tools might include:

ü Shared task boards - To promote
visibility
ü Messaging and chat boards - To
enable communication
ü Knowledge repositories - To store
shared documents
ü Video-conferencing tools - For face-to-
face communication

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Engagement
Assessments
Use Stakeholder Engagement
Assessment Matrix - Compares
current and desired stakeholder
engagement levels.

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Team
Communications Plan
Create the initial team communications
plan.
Components include:
ü Team meeting times

ü Tools to track work status

ü Frequency of work status updates

ü Shared team hours

ü Preferred communication
approaches
Encourage the team to adopt its own
practices and drive iterative
improvements to communication
approaches.
Aim for effective collaboration and
broad, accurate visibility across
stakeholders.

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GUIDELINES

Implement Options for Virtual Team Member

Engagement
• Focus on collaboration and team norms before focusing on tools.
• Recognize that team formation in a virtual environment is difficult, so
reinforce the teams’ mutual commitments, achievements, and
opportunities.
• Virtual teams require a significant amount of feedback and reinforcement
of team goals and objectives.
• Provide opportunities for members of a virtual team to meet in person to
build relationships that nurture their shared commitment to project goals.

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Calendar Tools
Shared calendars help virtual teams
plan meetings, coordinate feedback,
and improve visibility to goals and
activity status.

Timeboxed meetings:
ü Improve focus

ü Encourage team to set clear

agendas and objectives
ü Help keep the work on track

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Variance Analysis
As the team works, produce variance
analyses, such as:
ü Accuracy of team estimates

ü Delivery in a sprint or by an established

milestone
ü Team performance against targets

Results of a variance analysis may be

shared as part of a retrospective to serve
as:
ü A basis for problem solving

ü Identification of lessons learned

ü Proposed improvement experiments

for subsequent iterations

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Virtual Team Best
Practices
Manage inherent risk of individual team
members becoming isolated.

Focus on shared commitments vs.

individual accomplishments for tasks.

Instill a sense of shared commitments in

the team:
ü Start with the team charter

ü Then adopt behaviors to reinforce

collaboration and promote visibility
Prioritize team goals over individual
performance.
Enable teams to self-organize and be
accountable for deliverables.

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Check your understnding

• You are working on the global project; every team member speaks different
language; how will you make sure they understand each other

• A) Have a common language

• B) Have a translator

• C) Ask to sponsor

• D) Update communicationn plan

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Check your understanding

• Your team members have never used zoom in their life; due to covid, now
everything will be online; what will you do? Choose two

• A) Provide them training on zoom

• B) Check the stakeholder plan

• C) Check communication plan

• D) Update issue log

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• Your project includes virtual members from many countries. Colocation is not
possible.
• Which measure is most likely to help team members act as one and remove
communication impediments? (Choose two)
• Technical training for all team members

• Arranging daily phone conferences and detailed reporting

• Establish remote pairing using video conferencing tools to allow for face-to-face
meeting options
• Create a fishbowl window through an ongoing video conferencing feed between
various locations

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• Which of the following becomes increasing important in a virtual team
environment?
• Requirements engineering

• Communication planning

• Formal procurements closure

• Network diagramming

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Communication

What are 4R?

What is importance of Communication

management plan?

Define the difference between Work

Performance Data, Work
Performance Information, and Work
Performance Reports.

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 Question No: 01
The difference between push and pull communication can be described as:

A. Push communication requires feedback from the recipients. Pull communication requires more effort on the part
of the receiver.
B. Push communication is best suited for telephone or in-person messages. Pull communication is best suited for
email and voice mail.
C. Push communication requires confirmation of message receipt. Pull communication requires the recipient to
send a request to the sender for information.
D. Push communication is sent to those who need to know the information. Pull communication requires that the
recipients access the information at their own discretion.
 Question No: 02
What is the impact of noise on communication?

A. Noise impacts communication only if it is persistent

B. Noise makes it hard to hear the communication since it is too loud
C. Noise changes the message while being delivered
D. Noise interferes with the understanding of the message by the
receiver
 Question No: 03

Thinking of communications planning for a global project with resources in

different continents, which of the following is an example that best represents an
assumption?

A. Team members are acquired in various geographical locations

B. Entire team is fluent in English
C. All resources are technically competent
D. Costs in all countries are within budget
 Question No: 04
You are providing a few pointers to your project coordinator who is going in for a presentation with
senior management for the first time since he joined the organization. Among a whole list of tips
and recommendations, you advise him to watch for a few nonverbal techniques from the senior
management, as they may provide insights into their feelings. Which of the following is not a
nonverbal consideration / technique?

A. Gestures
B. Tone of voice
C. Mirroring
D. Pre-positioning
 Question No: 05

Napoleon is performing the Manage Communications process. Which of the

following best describes the most significant outputs of this process?

A. Performance reports, deliverable status, and schedule progress

B. Updates to the communications and stakeholder engagement plan
C. Updates to the issue log, project schedule and stakeholder register
D. The communications management plan