Planning for Project Communications

In my most recent to posts I introduced the importance of communications in global projects and the impact effective communication has on project success.  Today, I'm going to push this point even further by relating this important project management skill to our standard for project management processes; the Project Management Institute's (PMI) Project Management Body of Knowledge.

This year PMI released the fifth edition to A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK).  This latest edition includes a new knowledge area referred to as Project Stakeholder Management.  This new knowledge area supplements the existing knowledge area of Project Communications Management.  In this new edition, two of ten knowledge areas (20%) are closely related to stakeholder communications.  Clearly, project communications is increasingly important to PMI and the project management profession.

According to the PMBOK, as we plan our projects, we integrate the Project Stakeholder Management knowledge area with the Project Communications Management area.  By including both of these knowledge areas we are able to identify and study our project stakeholders, determine the stakeholders' interests and needs in the project, identify the stakeholder communication needs and preferences, prepare and deliver project communications to the stakeholders, and ensure the stakeholders are engaged and satisfied with the project processes and deliverables.

One of the central roles of a project manager is to facilitate communications across all project stakeholders.  As demonstrated in the most recent PMI Pulse of the Profession research, project communications is a key success factor.  Therefore, we must establish and execute a plan to ensure our project stakeholders are engaged and our communications with these groups are clear, consistent, and meaningful to support stakeholder engagement.  This communications plan is so much tied to the project success that we have to consider the communications planning as the same level of importance as our work breakdown structures and task scheduling.