Yesterday I spoke about the importance of communication and why it was also vital that everyone involved in a project knew where updates and information about the project came from and who was ultimately responsible for them. Today I want to look more at the method of communication; how we get the information about the project or changes to schedule or scope, milestones, and updates to all of the people involved in the Project. There are now more that I think at anytime in the past more ways in which a Project Manager can communication with those involved in the project than ever before. I will look at at some of the more traditional methods methods today, perhaps thinking about them in a new light and tomorrow I will continue on to look at some newer or alternative methods of communication that Project Managers may want to utilise in certain circumstances.
FACE TO FACE MEETIINGS
The traditional face to face, around the table project team meeting has I think been the staple of most projects and project managers since the dawn of time. But how effective are they? Used for the right purpose I think the sit down meeting has its benefits. If well run with a good agenda they can facilitate the sharing of information, provide a good documentation process of proceedings and the making of decision quickly and easily,if the right people are present. It is this that points to one of the problems with the sit down meeting. There is a limit to the number of people who can be involved and the meeting still be successful and well run. You need to choose carefully the people who will be attending the meeting carefully so that you have all of the people you need there to make decisions about the agenda without having so many people that those decisions become more difficult to make.
The other central issue for most people with the sit down meeting is that they take time,time to organise, time to run and time to document. If the purpose of the meeting is simply to share information, a quick update of progress, or anything where there are not going to be things discussed or decided that will effect the schedule or scope of the project or where documentation is not required try a stand up or watercooler meeting. Meet the key people you want to discuss things with not around a table but standing up. It will encourage people to get straight to the point, create an atmosphere of effectiveness and make the meeting substantially shorter as people will not relax as much as they would in the comfortable meeting room chairs. Remember though the stand up meeting will not suffice in every circumstance sometimes we need to have a more formal sit down meeting.
TELEPHONE CALLS
Mobile phone technology in particular has made it incredibly easy for a project manager to keep in touch not just with the members of his actual project team but also with the wider project as well,the ability to ring, a supervisor, team leader, designer or engineer to ask them how things are progressing, or to tell them they are a doing a good job etc, is a great way for a project manager to keep in touch and maintain a real feel for how their project is progressing. Again however as with the stand up meeting restrict the purpose of phone calls to information gathering and the like. Using a telephone call, at least where it is not backed up by another medium, to pass on critical information about scope or scheduling is doing to be a dangerous practice if used regularly.
(Note I am only concerned with actual Telephone Calls here and not the many other functions that newer Smartphones can utilise. I will be discussing them separately.)
Again for most Project managers email has become the quickest and simplest method of passing on project information to those involved in the project. Why is email so useful? Simply because it is both relatively quick and it provides whoever sends or or receives it with documentation. It is incredibly useful where information about scope or schedule changes have to be passed on quickly,to a large number of people. One of the things that a lot of people not just project managers forget about email is this, even today not everyone has constant access to their email and even if they do they may not check every email as soon as it comes in. So if the information is time critical it may be useful to ring the people involved to notify them that there is a email coming that they need to look at, or discuss the fact that you will be sending out changes via email at the morning stand up meeting and when they should be arriving in peoples inbox. This should facilitate everyone working of the same plan even when there are changes being made. The other thing to bear in mind is who is source of emails in relation to changes to scope or schedule and who is responsible for them.
Tomorrow I will move away from these more traditional methods of communication and look at some ways in which ne technologies can be used to facilitate smoother project communication.
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