Chapter 15
Keeping Everyone Informed
In This Chapter
Identifying the underlying causes of communication problems
Thinking through the communication needs in your project
Establishing the most effective means of communicating
Planning for communications coming into the project, happening within it and going out of it
Imagine standing at one end of a large room filled with assorted sofas, chairs and tables. You’ve accepted a challenge to walk to the other end without bumping into any of the furniture. But as you set off, the lights go off and you now have to complete your trip in total darkness, with only your memory of the room’s layout to guide you.
Surprisingly, many projects are just like that walk across the room. People plan how the project will work – who’ll do what, by when and for how much – and they share this information with the team members and other people who’ll support the project. But as soon as the project work begins, people receive no information about their progress, the work remaining or obstacles that may lie ahead; they have to walk in the dark.
In your project, you want things to be different from those ‘walk in the dark’ projects. In fact, effective communication – getting the right information to and from the right people in a timely manner – is a key to successful projects.
Communications are a major source of problems in projects and are a factor frequently cited as a common cause of project failure. Such failure is unnecessary, though, because having ...
