Project communications are important in a number of ways – don’t neglect any of them.

There are a few ways that we need to be comfortable communicating when we are managing a project. Clearly, we need to enable effective communication within the project, so that team members and others have the information they need about what everyone else is doing to ensure their work remains on track, and fits in with everyone else’s.

But we also need to deal with communication going out of the project – every project I have worked on has had an element of communicating what the project is about to those outside. It’s about making sure that the mysterious organisation called the project doesn’t stay mysterious for long, and the rest of the business (who, ultimately, the project is designed to benefit) are aware of what the project is doing, and why.

One final aspect that is sometimes forgotten is being aware of communication coming into the project. The most obvious example of this is the communications being passed down from the Project Executive (or Sponsor) about the environment the project is working in. After all, this is part of their role – to be able to interpret the environment, and to be a point of contact for senior people within the business.

But this isn’t the only route communications will come into the project, though it is the most easily described formally. There will also be murmurings and rumours, gossip and chatter, most of which will be of no value, but some of which may actually highlight important issues.

For example, if the murmurs outside of the project, picked up in casual conversations by team members, point at a level of mistrust towards the project (and believe me, this can happen) it is important to make sure your communications out of the project are boosted – the message about the benefits may not be getting out clearly.

Of course, it may be that the project is always going to be seen slightly negatively – sometimes the project is doing work that is of benefit to the organisation as a whole, but not to certain individuals within it. In that case, it’s important to note the problems being aired, and realise they are issues to be dealt with, or indicate risks to consider, as the project continues its work.

Project communications are an important, and often overlooked, part of every project. I’ll be going into this in more detail next week – I hope you’ll join me then.