Writing a project communication plan

This no-frills technique is beaut for small- to medium-sized projects in publishing, IT and web development. (Larger, more complex projects need more detailed communication planning and management.)

The plan has five steps:

1. Identify communication channels
2. Identify the stakeholders
3. Write the plan
4. Fine-tune the plan
5. Implement the plan

The sample communication plan (Microsoft Excel 19 kb) is for a project to upgrade the email system in an organisation with 6000 employees. Modify the spreadsheet to suit your own project and communication needs.

1. Identify communication channels

Write a list of the communication channels available in the organisation. Here are some examples:

• Staff newsletter
• In-house magazine
• Briefings and information sessions
• Brownbag lunches
• Committee meetings
• Telephone calls and emails to individuals
• Web sites or blogs
• Posters to hang on walls, doors and noticeboards
• Flyers and bookmarks

2. Identify the stakeholders

Create a spreadsheet in Open Office or Microsoft Excel.

In the first column, list all the groups of people who have some sort of interest in your project. Examples of these stakeholders are:

• End-users of the final application, publication or web site.
• Staff and contractors who will contribute skills, knowledge, money or other support to the project (excluding the project team).
• People affected by the project’s outcomes: for example, the helpdesk staff who will have to answer end-users’ questions about the new email system.
• Steering group, implementation committee and working parties.
• People working on similar or related projects.

Across the page, label the columns “Week 1″, “Week 2″ and so on. Assign a whole column to “Launch”, and include a few post-launch weeks after that. (This should be based on your project plan.)

You might prefer to label the columns as a countdown to the completion date: “Week 10″, “Week 9″, etc. It may also be useful to add some notes about what the project team will be working on each week. Fine-tune the matrix to suit your particular project.

3. Write the plan

This step is best done in a small group, with people who represent the various technical, management and other areas of expertise you’ll be employing on the project.

For each stakeholder on your list, ask four questions.

At what point do we want them to be actively involved in the project? The helpdesk staff need to be fully briefed and ready to answer end-users’ questions on the day a new email system goes live.

What do they need to know about this project? The helpdesk staff need to know about any bugs in the email system; new features; what’s different from the old system; whether users should change their default mailbox preferences or reimport their address books.

When do they need to know it? In order to provide good support to end-users, the helpdesk staff should have at least a week to play with the beta system and ask any technical questions that arise.

What’s the most effective way to contact them? Some people pay attention to email newsletters; others prefer to get their news in a weekly staff meeting or via the internal mail. Select the communication channel (or channels!) that your project’s stakeholders actually use.

In our helpdesk example, the helpdesk staff will need a briefing session and guest logins at least 10 days before launch (so they can play with the beta system and ask their follow-up questions).
A group email should be sent out a few weeks in advance, to alert helpdesk staff to the project’s goals and schedule. This gives helpdesk staff time to plan their holidays and other work around the expected peak activity.
Another email could announce the date and venue of the information session, ideally a week or two before the event. The helpdesk manager could give her team a verbal reminder at a weekly team meeting.
After the information session, a follow-up email to the helpdesk group could provide a pointer to handouts and additional details available from the project’s web site.

After answering the four questions, write some tasks into the communication plan. (See the “Helpdesk staff” row of the sample communication plan.)

4. Fine-tune the plan

Any project is about change: you are doing a set of tasks that will change the organisation and its systems in some way.

Effective communication will help win supporters and helpers for the project. Try to ensure that each stakeholder gets at least three timely messages from you:

• Announcing that something will happen in the near future, and that it will directly affect or interest the stakeholder
• Reminding the stakeholder that something is about to happen, within a day or two, and that she may need to take action as a result
• Confirming that something has just happened, and that it happened successfully (if it wasn’t a success, say so — and tell the stakeholders what you’ll do to retrieve the situation)

Pretend you are the stakeholder and read through the plan line by line, column by column. Are you going to receive the information you need, when you need it, delivered in the way you’re most likely to hear it?

Once you’re happy with the plan, assign project team members to be responsible for completing each task.

5. Implement the plan as part of the project’s day-to-day business

Bring the communication plan to your weekly or fortnightly team meetings and use it as a tool for monitoring and recording progress. Ask team members to bring any feedback they receive from stakeholders, and use this to revise and update the plan as needed.

This page created 2005, last updated 29 August 2007.

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