Do you know who said this?
"I had six honest serving men. They taught me
all I knew.
Their names were: Where, What, When, Why, How and
Who"?
You probably don't know - but you'll recognise his
name. It's Rudyard Kipling, author of "The Jungle Book", now famous
as a Disney film.
Rudyard Kipling's saying can help you in Project
Management. His basic questions "What, When, Why, How and Who" can guide
you though the tangled jungle of project management communications.
Communications are important in Project Management
- they can be critical to project success. Various analysts have highlighted
poor communications as a major source of project failure, from the Standish
Report of 1996 to the 2007 survey by COMPTIA.
Why is it so important to communicate? Firstly
because many projects are cross-functional. Most organisations are functionally
based - they are a series of functional silos. Things may work well inside
each silo, but projects need to work transversally, across the organisation (more
than one silo) and they often need to work with partners outside of the
organisation (more than one company). For a cross-functional project to succeed,
you need rich, transversal communications.
Secondly, the project is a vehicle for change.
People are naturally resistant to change; they are familiar with the current
ways of working. Change is disruptive; there is resistance to change. For your
project to deliver real change, you need to communicate to maximise buy-in and
to minimise resistance.
As it is important to communicate, the project
manager needs a communication plan. This is where Rudyard Kipling's saying
comes in.
We need our own Six Honest Serving Men to create a
communications plan.
· To whom? The stakeholder
group who receive the communication
· What? The message to
communicate
· Why? The objective of the
communication
· By whom? Who will create
and/or deliver the communication
· When? What frequency, or
what date, or during which stage of the project
· How? What channel of
communication (email, face to face, meeting, intranet...)
Example
To Whom? |
What? |
Why? |
By whom? |
When? |
How? |
Entire project team |
Initial objectives |
Get involvement |
Project Manager |
Start of project |
Kick-off workshop |
Order management team |
Training schedule |
Ensure availability for training |
Order Admin Manager |
Start of stage 2 |
During monthly team meetings |
Sales Force |
New bonus scheme |
Motivation |
Regional Sales Manager |
At next Quarterly Meeting |
Powerpoint with Q&A |
Internal Audit |
Process flowchart |
Compliance |
Process team lead |
For each new version |
Process workshop |
etc... |
|
|
|
|
|
Creating the communications plan is the first step.
Once that's done, the next step is to put the plan into action - to use it to organise
your communications, week-by-week, month-by-month.
For the project manager , creating a communication
plan is useful investment of energy. It normally takes you only an hour or two
to create an initial plan, and it will save you hours of sweat throughout the
project. It helps identify your transversal stakeholders. And it helps you
focus on areas of possible resistance, and how best to mimimise resistance.
A communications plan is a best practice approach. In
the Prince2 project management method, it's the basis of the project's Communications
Strategy. In MSP, for programme
management, there is a diverse toolkit, starting with a Stakeholder Engagement
Strategy; passing by various Stakeholder Analyses; and finishing with a
Communications Plan.
Whatever your method, get out of the jungle! Remember
Kipling's six honest servants and create a communication plan for your project
or programme.
