PMI PMP Project Management Professional – Introducing Project Communications Management

1. Section Overview: Project Communications Management

Welcome to this section on project communications. We have an awful lot to talk about here when it comes to communication because 90% of a project manager’s time is spent communicating. So it’s no wonder that this is a really important topic for your PMP exam. In this section, we’re going to discuss the project communications management overview and creating a project communications plan. And so this is tied a lot to what we’ll see coming up in stakeholder management because we’re communicating with stakeholders. Thank you very much.

We’ll look at some trends for project communications management and then also what are some concerns that we need to have if we’re in an adaptive or agile environment. So how does communication affect the project management approach there? We’re going to look at some different communication technologies and methods. A

gain, we’ll talk about interpersonal and team styles, assessment, data representation, creating some successful communication. What does that mean to be successful? And then this communications management plan. I have a case study for you on communication and then we’ll come back and talk about monitoring communication. All right. A lot of information that talk about here, some really just some key concepts that you probably already do as a project manager. Most good PMS that I meet are good communicators. All right, let’s hop in here and knock this section out.

2. Key Concepts for Project Communications Management

As a project manager, you know how important it is to communicate with your stakeholders. Communications is one of the most important things that we do as a project manager. So let’s talk about some key concepts for project communications management. There are different ways that we can communicate. Obviously verbal and face to face is the preferred method for communication. But think about written versus spoken communication and when is one preferable over the other? When is one most appropriate? Think about formal and informal communication. So those hallway meetings and ad hoc meetings versus a report or a presentation, your body language and the tone affect your message and then the media.

So is it a formal report, is it an email, is it a text message? What’s most appropriate? And then your choice of words can affect the meaning or the intent of your message. So those are some key concepts. Here one thing that I really want to come back to, this idea of informal communications. Sometimes when you were sent an email and you put a little joke in and then people don’t get the joke. So your choice of words and what you’re communicating, we have to be careful that we’re clear. I’m not saying don’t be friendly and have a joke, but that we’re clear. You use a little smiley face or those emote icons or whatever they’re called, where you’re just letting people know wink. It’s a joke because it’s easy to misinterpret. And then, especially with written communications, what the body language and tone is. So face to face is always the preferred method of communications.

Look at these communication activities in the way that we communicate, obviously internal, but what about external communications where you have to communicate with the media or the public? And is that even what you do as the project manager? Maybe external is handled by a communications department or a spokesperson for your organization. What about formal versus informal? There’s something about putting things in writing that makes it more formal, that makes it more official, except for email, which is more informal, or a text message.

So what we’re communicating should fit the media, so how it’s being delivered. So we want to be aware of that when we think about what are we communicating and is this the best method and does this meet the stakeholder expectations for communication? We think about the hierarchy, who communicates to whom. So thinking about managers and stakeholder representatives, your project team and just other people that you have to communicate, what’s the hierarchy because that can affect how you communicate.

Official communications, whether it’s reports or presentations, are more formal and then unofficial, like text messages and emails that may be more relaxed in the tone. And of course, written and oral written always seems to have a more formal approach to it, a more serious approach, especially when it’s one of our work performance reports. Oral can be good though, because it can be direct. But it’s always good to follow up. If you’re in a meeting with your project team and someone gives you a verbal commitment to doing an activity, it’s good to write that down and follow up and get it in writing right after the meeting because you know what’s going to happen.

I don’t remember doing that. So it just helps people remember what they promise. Within communication there are five C’s, the letter C, not like the ocean. There are five C’s of communication. You need correct grammar and spelling. Sometimes you have to spell the wrong word or you spell something incorrectly or you have poor grammar. It’s a distraction from the message. The message is most important. You want to have concise expression and avoid excessive words. So excessive words, things that are supplerface or too many, too fancy. See it’s easier to say that excessive words, that just affects the message that you don’t want to say.

Megalopolis when the word city will do. You want to be concise and direct. You want to have clear purpose. Why am I getting this report? Why am I getting this email? So it’s clear, it’s direct, it’s concise, people are busy. I want to be able to skim it and then go to the bullets, go to an executive summary. So I want to be concise and have a clear purpose. I need a coherent and logical flow of ideas. So you don’t bury the lead as we say in journalism classes. You get to the point, you put the most important stuff at the top. You make information easy to find.

You’re not writing War and Peace. When you create a novel, you are going to the point. And then you put stuff in bullets and use headings so people can skim and find what they’re interested in. And then color coding is good too, not a bunch of colors and clip art but I mean you could have a little box up there that’s red, amber green to show the level of importance. So these are in your reports and you want a controlled flow of ideas. So just what I’m talking about there about being coherent and then you have controlled flow of ideas. So most important to least important so those are the five C’s of communication.

3. Trends and Emerging Practices in Project Communications Management

There are some trends in project communications management that we should be aware of. You want to know these for your exams right out of the Pmbok Guide, 6th Edition. We include stakeholders in project reviews and in project meetings that it’s not unusual to have a stakeholder attend. Remember, stakeholders are a form of expert judgment. They’re closest to the requirements. Something that’s becoming more and more of a trend is social computing. I’m not saying you go on Facebook and you make a post for the whole world to see and all of your friends and family to see, but maybe you create a group that’s only for people in the project, or a Twitter feed just for people in your project, or a LinkedIn group or what have you. So some way of dispersing information, but you control access to that information.

On the other side of that though, maybe you’re doing a public project. So you do have a Facebook group or a Facebook page or a website, and you do texting and things like this to keep people posted, even the public, about your project. So social media, social computing, you might have one or two questions where they introduce that idea on the exam. So don’t be surprised by that. There are many, many different approaches to communicating.

So you don’t have to be a master of all of them, but you want to use the most appropriate method to communicate and then be effective at that way of communicating. In the Pinbox there are some themes, and we’ve seen some of this throughout our course. So some communication themes in the Pinbox Guide, 6th edition. You want to listen actively. Active listening means you stay in the conversation that you are listening to the participant, that you are interested, and you’re present that you aren’t thinking about all the things you have to do.

Active listening also means that you summarize what’s been said so that the speaker, the original sender of the message, you can say it back to them, you summarize it, and then they can correct you or agree with you that you have a clear understanding. When we’re dealing with different cultures or different personalities, we need some emotional intelligence and we need to have some cultural awareness of how that may affect our message or influence our message. Conflicts we know are natural. We saw this back in chapter nine of the Pinbox with conflict resolution, we have to manage meetings. Key example here manage meetings. We need an agenda. Agenda says what we are going to do. We set our start and stop times and those are our boundaries.

So we have to manage the meeting to get everything done in that set amount of time. We keep everyone on point. We don’t need all these little side conversations and what you do on the weekend. We have a set amount of time and let’s get things done. You manage expectations. Someone should record and document any assignments, and then you follow up on what’s happened. And if you’re keeping minutes, which in the Pinbach world you’ll have minutes, or a scribe that keeps minutes for you, that you follow up with those minutes as well. So you have an agenda and you stick to it. And remember, time box start and end. So it’s a time boxed meeting. It just doesn’t go on and on and on forever. I call those Wot meetings waste of time.

That won’t be on your test. Tailoring communications. Of course you can tailor communications for what’s most appropriate. Communications is all about who needs what information, when do they need it, and then what modality? So when we think about that, in light of what are the stakeholder expectations? When do they need it? What do they want? What’s the expected modality? Where are people located? So there may be some language differences or time zone differences. Different holidays, too. We think about that. When it comes to communication technology, if you’re doing a social media group or social computing, does everyone have access to that? And if they don’t, how will they get that information? Different languages and then knowledge management. So remember knowledge management all the way back from chapter four in the Pinbach guide that what you’re communicating is knowledge. So how you communicate it and having an information retrieval and storage, that that’s all affected here as well. All right, great job. Keep moving forward.

4. Considerations for Adaptive Environments

Communication is important regardless of the environment you’re in. Whether you’re in adaptive or a predictive environment, communication is paramount. So but there are some considerations in the Pinbox guide for adaptive environments. So let’s take a look at this information. Documentation in an agile environment is not a value add, so documentation and an agile not the greatest thing. We do need some rules and common approaches, though, with dealing with the team, so how we communicate with the team and who’s allowed to communicate with the team and when.

So we don’t put up walls around the team, but we want to protect the team from too many interruptions. The team and the stakeholders, though, work together. They can openly communicate, but we don’t want lots of interruptions unless it’s requested, unless the team member needs a stakeholder there. So during iterations, that two to four week sprint or whatever you want to call that iteration.

We don’t want the team interrupted unless they need the stakeholder to participate. So we need to protect them, but we don’t necessarily keep them isolated. Some agile communication facts, face to face and informal, is agile. It’s quick. I can turn around and talk to my buddy here, my colleague, my peer, whatever, and get the information I need.

Every day we have a daily scrub meeting or a stand up meeting. It lasts for about 15 minutes, and there are some special rules that go with that daily meeting. We also have sprint reviews to look back on what we’re worked in that sprint, and then a sprint retrospective where everyone participates. And we talked about basically lessons learned and what worked and what did not work. So these are some agile communication facts you need to be aware of. All right, keep moving forward.

5. Communications Planning

Our first process in the Communications Management Knowledge area is to plan communications. To plan communications, we’re talking about creating our Communications Management Plan. This plan will define how will you manage and control communications in your project. It’s linked to our stakeholder management and stakeholder engagement. That these two chapters, chapter Ten here of the Pinbach and Chapter 13 of the Pinbach are really related closely. So let’s talk about the EDOs for planning communications.

Our inputs, your charter, your PM plan, specifically our resource management plan and our stakeholder engagement plan. Project Documents requirements documents the Stakeholder Register enterprise environmental factors and OPA. Lots of tools and techniques to plan communications. Expert Judgment we’re going to do some analysis on our communication requirements. Identify the technology, the model and the methods to communicate. We do need some interpersonal and team skills when it comes to communication. So we’ll do a Communication styles assessment.

Basically, just what’s the most appropriate way to communicate. Political awareness and cultural awareness all affect our communications. Data representation, the Stakeholder Engagement, Assessment Matrix and meetings. Our outputs of planning, communication, the communications management plan the project management plan updates stakeholder engagement plan like the project document updates the project schedule and the stakeholder register. We do have some common goals of communication planning. We’re trying to identify who needs this information and then when do they need the information, what’s the expected modality and how do we secure it, archive it and allow access to that information?

So not everyone needs all information, so some of that people are not privy to. And then what about communication influences like time zones, languages, working hours, access to the technology? All of that business affects our choices when it comes to how do we deliver and secure and access information. So this is part of Communications Planning answering these questions upfront who needs the information, when is it needed, what’s the expected modality and then how do we secure it? Some considerations for planning communications as I just mentioned, you’ve got to store it and retrieve it and secure it. So that’s part of our communications planning. Where are people physically located? So how will that affect their access to the information? What about languages and time zones? Differences? Even access to certain technology?

You might have some communication software like Microsoft Linked or some other web collaboration software. If you’re dealing with a virtual team. Can everyone use that? Is the speed of each individual adequate enough as far as their Internet speed goes to watch those videos or to communicate with each other in a video? Or are you on the phone through this software? So what’s that going to look like? Based on what people are in different geographical areas with different technologies? What are the technical capabilities?

So sometimes it’s tough to use, especially if you’ve never used one of these web collaboration software before, or even Microsoft Link or Skype or Google Hangout. Sometimes it’s kind of tricky. The first two or three times, or if you have older equipment or you have a poor network connection, that can really affect your ability to use this and communicate effectively. You also think about just the competency level. Not everyone plays around the computer all day or uses this different software. So if you don’t use it frequently, it can seem challenging and really frustrating. When videos are fading in and out and you hear echoes and things like this, we know what that’s like.

So language barriers are also an issue. If I speak German and you speak French, we’re going to have a tough time communicating. So maybe we need a translator, I need to learn some French and you need to learn some German or whatever the case may be. You think about those telephone and video conferencing abilities kind of related back to our technical capabilities. So can you set up a conference call on your phone or do you use a third party or something like go to meeting or whatnot? So how will you do these telephone and video conferencing? And does everyone have the ability and the technology to participate? If not, that’s really going to affect our communications.

Some enterprise environmental factors come into play here with communications planning. What’s your culture and structure like, because that will affect how you get to communicate and what you’re allowed to do. What are the standards and regulations when it comes to communications? You think about a public project, there are some standards and regulations you have to follow and access to information. Risk thresholds. We’ll talk about risk coming up in chapter eleven in the Pmbok guide. But basically the risk threshold is how comfortable are you with that risk and that can affect our communication. We’ll see more about that in chapter eleven in the Pinbox personnel administration policies. So that affects how you communicate and what you’re communicating. And then you think about the communication channels, the tools, the equipment, the systems, just the flow, the established flow, and the cultural norms in your organization on how you communicate. And then once again the geographical makeup of the organization, the team.

Well, that definitely affects communication. Some communication requirements to think about here. So what we’re talking about is you’re going to meet with the stakeholders and understand what are their requirements for communication. So you think about all the different groups of stakeholders or types of stakeholders. They could each have different expectations or requirements for communication. So let’s dig in here and take a look at what we are documenting and what stakeholders could expect for our communication planning. So the stakeholder engagement plan we’ve not talked about yet, it’ll be coming up in module 13, the Pinbox. But this is a plan on how you keep people engaged and engagement really happens with communication. So that’s a main input here is we plan about requirements.

Our project development approach, people want to know about that. How are you going to get this done? What are the phases? What will the project go through? You might identify charts. So charts for your project, for the different stakeholders, or for every stakeholder involved in the project. Where do they fit into the chart? Because that could affect communication and help you identify who needs what information based on where they are. In this chart, you identify the different communication channels. So who needs what information, when do they need it, and what modality? So how will you get it to them, and what’s the most appropriate channel based on the information you’re trying to communicate? Remote stakeholders, what’s the logistics there? How will they get this information? Think also about stakeholders who are like a contractor or a vendor, that they’re outside of your network, so they may not have chat in some of the same abilities that you have internally, the project structure. So are you in a matrix environment? Are you a project centric?

Are you a simple, organic? All of those affect communication. A matrix is very complex because you have people from all over and you have different managers, and they have managers, any other project managers. So it can get very complicated when it comes to communicating in any one of those matrix structures. What about responsibility, relationships? So who reports to whom? Who has what responsibilities for different parts of the project? Who contributes to the project? So those all contribute to communication requirements, the different departments and disciplines. So do you talk to the actual team member?

Do you talk to a team lead? Do you talk to the functional manager? Then we think about the number of individuals that are involved in the project and where they’re located, internal and external information needs. So you think about talking to the public or working with the communications department. What about legal requirements for communication? Especially if you are in a public entity or a government entity, you may have some requirements about publishing that information. And then stakeholder information will create what’s the stakeholder register. And so we have some information there about their contacts and what they want and their communication requirements. All right, Greg. Great job. That’s communications planning. Keep moving on. I’ll see you in the next lecture.

6. Exploring Communication Technologies

Okay, communication technology. We know there are all sorts of different ways to communicate. So we have the phone, we have email, you can even have faxes, texting, social media, and we have different types of messages to communicate through these different technologies. Modalities well, we want to think about when we think about communication technology, how urgent is this information? If I need to let you know right now a text message is right on because it’s fast and it’s quick, but maybe a phone call is more appropriate. So texting and phone calls, those are fast, instant ways to communicate, but they may not always be allowed or the most appropriate way to communicate. Think about availability of the technology. If I send the text blast out to everyone, does everyone have the ability to text? Or they always have their phone on them or an email? How easy is it to use whatever technical solution you choose?

So there’s all sorts of add ons to your phone or for email, like packages or collaborative packages, but do we need some training there for everyone to have the same skill set? So how easy is it to use and to get information quickly and accurately? Your project environment will also influence what technology you use. So if you have people all over the world and they’re out in the field working on different things, they may not always have access to get a text message or even a phone call. So we have to consider that. So that’s always important. And then the sensitivity and confidentiality of what you’re sending out, we have to consider have you ever sent an email or text message to the wrong person and you were talking about that person?

Not that you would do that, but that other guy I know I’ve certainly never done that. So you get the idea though, that there are some information that’s very sensitive and confidential that we don’t want to just blast out to the world. We have to be careful about how we communicate and with whom we communicate. So there are some things that are sensitive and confidential and technology can almost be too easy sometimes on what you’re sending out for your exam, you’ll need to know this little communications channel formula. And it’s a real simple and almost silly little formula. So here’s the idea. The formula is N times N minus one divided by two, where n represents the number of stakeholders. So we have ten stakeholders. So ten times nine divided by two. So 90 divided by two is 45. That we have 45 communication channels.

Now, the types of questions that you may receive, you may say you have ten stakeholders this week, but next week you’re going to have 15. How many more communication channels do you have? You can’t just solve for five. You first solve for ten and then you have to solve for 15. And then you subtract the difference because it’s going to be bigger than just having five stakeholders. The more people that are involved in the project, the more complex communications will be. And that’s all this formula shows. So a channel is between you and every other person in the project, and then every person in the project, it’s between them and every other person. So you can see it gets very complex very quickly as you begin adding more and more people. So there’s opportunities for gossip, for misunderstanding, for miscommunication, for poor information.

So it’s just the bigger the project, the more planning and the more control we’re going to need of the messaging. You need to know this communications model. So the communications model describes how does information flow between parties. So let’s take a look at this idea of sending an email. So here we have this feller, and he wants to send this lady an email about the shampoo that he uses for that beautiful flowing hair that he has. I’m probably just a little jealous is why I’m saying that. But that’s, that fella there, he wants to send an email. So he is the sender. His email program is the encoder. It packages up his message. The medium is the internet or the network, or however it’s getting from me, from that guy to that individual.

So the medium is the network, all right? So the network, that lady is the recipient. So her email package decodes it so that she can read the message about his beautiful hair. So then she is the recipient. Now, sometimes if you and I were talking face to face or on a phone call, we might have some interruptions, some things that distort the message or static that causes us not to be able to understand one another. And that’s considered noise. So noise is anything that kind of interrupts or distracts from the message. Here a barrier is it blocks communication.

So if one of those either the sender the receiver, if they don’t check their email, or they don’t have to use email, or they’re mad at each other, they can’t communicate. Or if the fax machines out of paper, that’s a barrier. So just any one of those things that stops us from communicating, we speak different languages, that’s a barrier. So anything that stops us, often barriers, though, you think about a personality or a conflict, these people aren’t talking with each other. And acknowledgement just means, I received your message. Like you ever talk to someone and they’re shaking their head yes as you speak, right. They’re giving some nonverbal clues that are with you. Maybe you’re doing that in this course.

Sure, it’s good. An acknowledgement, though, means I’m hearing you, I understand, I’m with you. But it doesn’t necessarily mean they agree or they truly understand. So those people, sometimes they shake their head yes, but you can tell they should really be shaking their head no. All right, so that’s acknowledgement a feedback and response. A feedback is when I say we need to install all those printers. And then you would say what printers? Or for which building? Or whatever question you have that’s feedback.

We’re having a conversation, so a feedback or a response. So in this example, the lady gets the email about his hair and then she writes back that I know you went to hair club for men, or whatever it may be. I’ve never investigated that. I’m proud of my bald head. So I know all you hairy guys out there wish you had that. It’s possible. Anyway, that’s the sender receiver model. Getting a little punchy here. Okay, so let’s move on. That’s the communication model. You may have one question about that on your exam. Other planning considerations. When we talk about communications management, cross cultural communications, you have people all over the world. So not just you communicating, but those folks have to communicate with each other. And that could affect communications or cause disruptions or issues in your project if they’re not culturally aware of how they’re communicating, how things may be interpreted.

There is an acknowledgement in PMBOK six to a difference in communication styles. So how people work that say, could affect our communication style, the age of the people involved in the communication. So these kids and all they’re texting and social media, and this guy over here has got his flip phone going. So there’s some things there that the age may affect. Or someone makes a reference that other person doesn’t understand, they don’t get the joke because it’s beyond or too young for them to get the joke. Whatever the case may be, you get the point that age can affect how we communicate in our style. The nationality where people are from can affect the communication style, the professional discipline. How an attorney speaks is totally different than how the guy on the job site on a construction project speaks, not saying one’s better than the other.

They just have different communication styles. The ethnicity can affect the communication style, as can the race, the gender or cultural differences. So we need to respect differences. Differences are good. We don’t want everybody the same. That’s boring. But when we have different people and different cultures and different factors here, we need to know that all contributes to how we communicate. And so it’s very important that we plan that or we consider that when we go about communicating with others. Some other things that we need to take into consideration when we get into communication. You ever get one of those Blistering emails?

Or maybe you know someone who has sent one of those Blistering emails? What was the sender’s emotional state? So why would they really say that face to face? That’s always a question it’s important to ask. Why are they responding this way? So having some emotional intelligence, then we think about the knowledge of what they’re talking about, whether it’s a blazing email or not. Just when someone responds? Do they know what they’re talking about? Are they knowledgeable? Do we respect their opinion?

What’s their background and their personality? Because that could influence the message that we may want to interpret it in light of these things. What’s their personality? Do they have a bias towards one technical solution? So it’s like you’re getting a sales pitch sometimes, and then that’s also the same for me, the receiver. So I think about when I go to respond or when I read something, what’s my emotional state? So you can be in a bad mood, and you get a text message or an email message, and it’s totally filtered by that mood that you’re in where the sender didn’t mean it, the way you’re interpreting it. Also, your knowledge and background of personality and so on can affect the message that you have received. All right, good. Important information there. I’m going to go comb my hair, and I’ll see you in the next lecture.

7. Communication Methods

Alright, welcome back. Let’s talk about some different ways that we can communicate. Some communication methods. So we need to look at some terms here that you’ll want to recognize for your exam. So first off, our interactive communication, it’s just we interact with each other. We have two or more parties in real time talking or or in a chat or what have you. So we think about phone calls or meetings, face to face or web collaboration meetings, or even just some ad hoc conversations. You’re at lunch or in the hallway and you’re just having a conversation. It’s more informal. In that case, a push communication is like an email. I push it to these specific people so it’s distributed. Now an email, we don’t really have a way of confirming have people received it and understood it. So you might see a little green checkmark that they opened it.

We don’t know if they read it and we certainly don’t know if they understand it. So I just push it out. It’s like a one way, a push out the message. Like I send you a memo if we want to go old school. I don’t know if you got it. You open the little inner office envelope and there’s the memo. I really need you to confirm that you’re reading it and you understand it. Pull communication is where the opposite that I have like a website or a database and you pull information from my website or database that it’s ideal for large complex information sets.

So you’re doing a query about what activities are in motion. So it would search our project database there through SharePoint or whatever, and then you could run a report, but you’re pulling that from what we have shared. So if we share it, we know that there’s some security involved here. So do you have permission to access that? Are you technologically allowed to access that information? You might have a web portal or an intranet or even a public website. So things like elearning in your course, your lessons learned database and knowledge management or your knowledge repositories that you could search against to retrieve information to make decisions in the project. So that’s all. Pull communication though, so it takes the user to go and they want that information and they query and they pull it. Then we have interpersonal communication. Probably the best kind, frankly, is we have individuals face to face. It’s clear, you get body language, you have an opportunity to respond. People often face to face are much more comfortable than when they’re in a big group and they have to speak up in front of everyone. So interpersonal and face to face is typically ideal. Small group communication is just like three to six people, so it’s still pretty comfortable.

Like a meeting, a small meeting, three people is very small, six people, it’s a little bit more involved, but it’s still pretty comfortable. And everybody can have an opportunity to speak. You ever go to those meetings where there’s 20 people in the room and about three people are doing the talking? Real effective editorial. Okay. Public communication, single speaker to a group. So you’ve got a public presentation to do. There you go.

Mass communication is I’m going to have minimal contact with the group. So I’m sending out a huge email blast about our project, or we are going to take out an ad in the newspaper that explains our public project. So a full page ad and what we’re doing with this bridge or this warehouse we’re going to make into condos or whatever the case may be. So it’s minimal connection, but it’s a mass amount of group networks and social computing. So Facebook, LinkedIn, what have you, Instagram, whatever, you use a way to give that message, to distribute that message out. So it’s a mini to many where we can comment on it and other people comment on it, and you can still respond. So social computing. So using technology and the media there to give out information about your project.

When we communicate, we create artifacts. And artifact is just the physical thing that you create as a result of communication. So some common ones here, I’m not going to read all these to you, but some common ones newsletters, press releases, reports, your web portal, phone calls. That’s an interesting one. A phone call is verbal, but we might document what was said in the phone call. But a phone call is it is an artifact. We have a history of it. You hope, but it’s a verbal. So that one’s a little shaky. Presentations, focus groups, your social computing technology, those are all artifacts. So an artifact is the result of communication, the thing that you create by communicating. All right, good job. Keep moving forward.