9 Easy to follow steps to create a top-notch Project Communications plan

The most crucial success factor in project management is effective communications to all stakeholders—a critical core competency to all organizations. In a complex and competitive business climate, organizations cannot afford to overlook this key element of project success and long-term profitability

Project Management Institute, May 2013

The Communications plan describes who needs what information, when they will need it, where to deliver it, how to deliver it, who is responsible for delivering it, and the need for it.

Create the Communications plan at the beginning of the project and fully expand its use as the project ramps-up. Update the plan throughout the life of the project.

The Communications plan, created by the project manager, addresses the entire project organization. The planning framework identifies the communication goals, strategy and overall information requirements and distribution structure based on the project organization.

The Communications plan is formal or informal, highly detailed or broadly framed.

Development Approach

Step 1: Determine meeting and reporting requirements.

Review memos from the sponsor, the Contracts, the Project definition, the Project governance structure, Supplier Agreements, and the Organizational breakdown structure (OBS).

Step 2: Identify reporting and meeting policies and rules.

Review the Project documents to understand the specific project policies and rules for status reporting and status meetings. Policies and rules of the delivery organization often define the format and ways for status meeting and reporting.

Step 3: Establish information needs for all stakeholders.

Document communications aims for the stakeholders in the Communications plan and find the information needs of the stakeholders involved in the project. Analyze stakeholder needs and name the information provided and their sources.

Step 4: Determine if there are external media communication requirements.

Step 5: Determine stakeholder information needs and how to satisfy them.

Review the technical environment to find technology channels available within the project infrastructure. Map available communication technology channels to stakeholder information requirements and document in the Communications plan.

Step 6: Define formal reports to produce.

Define formal reports to produce to satisfy stakeholder requirements. Define the levels for which to produce the reports. Define the types of reports to produce for various levels and project organizational units and document in the Communications management plan.

Step 7: Define the project meetings.

Define the project meetings that will occur to satisfy stakeholder requirements and document them in the Communications plan: meetings are with the entire project team, one-on-one, or group, and face-face or electronic.

Step 8: Define how to share information.

Define the information retrieval and distribution strategy used to share information among team members and with the sponsor, including work products within and across the organization and document them in the Communications plan.

Step 9: Publish the Communications management plan

Review the plan with the sponsor. Ensure that the Communications plan is approved as required.