Stakeholders are the ones who are up with the project. Making them unhappy at any cost is like losing the project. And at no chance can you make them confused. So the deliverable requires communication between all the stakeholders in a consistent and clear way. That’s why you need this guide for communication planning and from here read on!
The first things first! What is communication planning?
The formal process of carrying out how the team members would communicate with the stakeholders on the project and the share of information between them is planned out which is called communication planning.
A creative process that has certain operations to be followed and the creation of communicating systems is involved.
What is its ultimate purpose?
One might think, communication is natural but is it really? The clearer message reaches people when it is properly put out. The informal way just conveys the message but the formal process reaches the brain and makes the communication better between the listeners. It is basically a structure and can say a resource to rely on when anybody has any questions.
What is the focus of the plan?
Let’s say the project belongs to one team, but the involvement must be from all the stakeholders to make the plan such that it is understandable even by the department people. So handling it by one individual is easier to reach people depending on the specificity of the reach. To illustrate, for the organization, the leadership team can create this plan and for the project, the manager can lay it out.
What steps are to be followed in coming up with a communication plan?
The base of all the plans goes this way.
- Identify among whom the communication must happen.
Figure out whether the communication is from the HR addressing the entire organization or is it between different departments?
- Find out why is the plan necessary?
As we consider communication to be natural we don’t realize the importance of it but, when we think in the perspective of how communication can be effective then we know what needs to be put forth and how organized it should be.
- Decide how each of the members will communicate.
The team members might need to finish documentation or use an email to send drafts or what tools are required to get things done comes under this step. Use the application called ProjectManager where the project documentation, plan, and communication can be managed in all in one tool!
- How frequent is the communication happening?
Most of the plans only require fixed intervals of knocking where all the check-ins for the process are laid out to all of them and ensure to keep them on the same page. And reserves the records of the past events.
- The responsibilities must be considered.
While communicating we might need to assign some of the responsibilities where usually the plan creator will assign. To illustrate th individuals will update their tasks to one person and that person would format the information and update it to the head of the departments.
What is the significant part of this plan?
The plan is complete when the five elements are included and they are:
- Figure initially by knowing who is the audience?
While we put out our communication, we must know who is our audience is in the first place! Are they the third parties? Executives or the department head? And how will the information be shared with them?
- What’s the message?
As you plan, find out what is that you want to speak about? In simple terms what is the message that needs to be communicated? And make sure the message is put out in simple terms.
- The aim of the message is laid out.
Why is the message necessary to be delivered? What is it conveying? So write a few lines describing the purpose of that message and what all must the listener know through the message,
- What tool is used to communicate?
Now being a planner, it must be specified as to where the team members can expect the message and how they must respond to it? If they have to communicate in only one tool? All of that information must be laid out.
- The time of communication.
Maybe it is just to check in on how things are going. Still, it needs a timely check-in be it may daily or monthly, or even weekly. It is not just that check-in must only when there is a huge announcement. It’s a bad way to check on the happenings. The time interval will keep the communication alive and will continue.
Bottom line
A structured way of delivering messages and communication between the group members keeps things simpler. If the same is not done properly then in the future it might look like a complicated mess to know which team is doing what and what is being delivered at what time and many things like that. So keep the process structured through the communication plan.
