I’ve previously written in some detail about the processes you need to use or adapt in project management, and the steps you need to take to improve the chances of a successful project. But we mustn’t forget that projects end up affecting people, and we need to make sure they are considered as well.

Four weeks ago, I talked about the three broad types of communication we need to consider in our projects – internal, outgoing, and incoming. Three weeks ago, we had a look at the outgoing communications in the project. Two weeks ago, we looked at the internal communications in a project. Last week, we dealt with communications that are incoming to a project.

Today, I want to look at bringing all of this together in a communications plan.

A communication plan needs some thinking about. The easiest part of the plan to deal with is that of outgoing communications. As we’ve already seen, we need to identify:

• who needs to be kept up to date with what is happening in the project
• how that information should be presented to them
• how often that information should be presented, and
• who has responsibility for making sure this happens

There is more information in this on the post on outgoing communications.

Internal communications also need to be considered in the plan. Now, many of the ways the team communicates internally will already be known, for example through a schedule of update meetings. However, it’s good practice to make sure these are referenced in the plan. Additionally, it is also a good idea to mention in the plan that informal communications are also important, and to encourage people to use them – but to think about how to capture useful ideas or important information afterwards.

Finally, incoming communications should also be covered. There’s no getting away from the fact that these are much more difficult to deal with, and are quite unlikely to come into the project in a structured way. So accept this, but use the plan to formally document the need to be open to these communications, and give the name of someone to whom project team members can take information that comes in like this. This should normally be the project manager.

I must stress that, as I’ve said throughout this mini-series on communications, that the formal methods are very unlikely to be enough. A huge amount of project management revolves around communications, around talking to people and bringing them into the team, around encouraging external suppliers to meet your targets, around making sure your future users know what is happening. Talking is often the best way to do this, but don’t neglect other traditional communications tools, such as posters, newsletters, and so on.

Electronic methods also have their part to play, with email being the one we are most used to. However, don’t neglect social media tools either, if appropriate for your project. You can find out more about those in a series on social media tools for project managers I wrote a while back.