I participated in a Communication Working Group session for the PMO today. Imagine a dozen people sitting around a table laughing for 10 minutes, when they realized I had shaved off my goatee. After the excitement subsided, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. It was really quite refreshing to see how excited everyone was to be there. (We only had 4 people for the prior meeting) Ishikawa diagrams littered the walls and the smell of Scripto markers filled the air.
I can't stress enough how important it is to have a Communications Management Plan. Feel free to download my template. If not, I recommend following the next 7 steps to write your own.
- List the project stakeholders and their associated roles and responsibilities
- Specify contact information for each stakeholder
- For each stakeholder identified, specify the information required to keep stakeholders informed and enable them to fulfill their project roles and responsibilities. Also, specify the timeframe, frequency, or trigger for distribution of the information.
- List the information that must be collected, summarized, and reported in order to produce the communication outputs that fulfill the stakeholder information requirements. Specify the associated collection and reporting details.
- List each report or document to be produced and distributed as a communication output to fulfill the stakeholder information requirements. Specify the associated distribution, storage, and disposition details.
- List and describe the distribution groups that will be used to distribute project information.
- Last, define all terms and acronyms required to interpret the Communication Management Plan properly.