Project Communication Plan
Project Communication Plan
By Michael D. Taylor
Before a new project is authorized there needs to be a plan for disseminating project information between all who are involved. This is especially needed between the assigned project manager and the key stakeholders to whom the project manager reports. Below is a simplified example of what the communication plan may entail.
| Stakeholder | Information Needed | Frequency | Medium |
| Sponsor | High-level cost, schedule, quality, performance, major problems and planned solutions | Monthly | Meeting and brief summary report |
| Customer/Marketing | High-level cost, schedule, quality, performance, major problems and planned solutions | Monthly | Meeting and brief summary report |
| Functional Managers | Major problems and planned solutions, personnel performance | Bi-weekly | |
| Finance | Project cost reports | Monthly | Project Manager | Weekly status reports from team leaders | Weekly | E-mail and weekly status meetings |
MICHAEL D. TAYLOR, M.S. in systems management, B.S. in electrical engineering, has more than 30 years of project, outsourcing, and engineering experience. He is principal of Systems Management Services, and has conducted project management training at the University of California, Santa Cruz Extension in their PPM Certificate program for over 13 years, and at companies such as Sun Microsystems, GTE, Siemens, TRW, Loral, Santa Clara Valley Water District, and Inprise. He also taught courses in the UCSC Extension Leadership and Management Program (LAMP), and was a guest speaker at the 2001 Santa Cruz Technology Symposium. His website is www.projectmgt.com.
Having delineated the nature of project information to be disseminated at various levels of the organizations, should’nt we need a software facility to develop all the different kinds of reports out of a single database of transactions recorded? :)