I believe that communication has to be implemented to everyone but the project manager should enforce and create a safe environment for everyone to be comfortable to communicate. However, if one of the members from the project group is still not communicate, it is the project manager to see what is the problem because he has to know the daily status of everyone. One solution that would be key in improving group that doesn't communicate is to hold weekly meetings force to everyone to talk. If I was project manager I would hold weekly meetings but I will also have log/email system to get an update of their daily log, if they are waiting, if they conducted something,etc they should mention in the log so I as project manager can see how everyone is progressing in the duties.
E-mails are the most efficient way to communicate with people if the culture of the company makes it so that is the main form of getting into contact with someone. If the person that you are trying to getting into contact with does not regularly check their email than it becomes calling the person. This relates a little to emotional intelligence because if you are rightly annoyed that this person does not use the main form of communication you can not show this or the task that you are trying to get done will be further delayed because you are more likely to work harder for someone you like and respect.
Ideally, all members of a project should be communicating with each other and the project manager. If that were not so, there would be no way for the PM to know what was getting done, or for different members to learn about the progress of the project, avoid pitfalls, etc. In the company that I work with, Skype IM's, Skype meetings, emails, and face to face communication are the main ways that people communicate within a team, and I find these avenues cover all the bases of communication: Skype IM's help with quick questions and mini status updates, Skype meetings provide a place to give more comprehensive updates/allow team members to talk and ask questions to the PM and each other, and emails help in formal communication that must be documented. In person talks tend to serve the purpose of most of the mentioned depending on the proximity of team members (some team members may be in another country so this may be unlikely to impossible). Overall, the most important thing in defining communication channels is that everyone agrees and that the most effective and appropriate means are used. If you know someone never responds to IM's or emails, if they are in the building, perhaps going to them in person would help. Or if someone is offline, IM won't work so email is the way to go. Selecting the best method of agreed upon communication for the situation is key to facilitating information flow.
A communication management plan documents how the project manager manages and controls communication. All stakeholder needs must be addressed. Communication management plan becomes a part of the project management plan.
Planning communications involve determining how to communicate each item. Communication can take place through face-to-face interactions, by telephone, fax, mail, or email; through virtual or in-person meetings; and through an intranet or internet-based forums for information. These different means of communications is termed Communication Technology.
A communication management plan documents how the project manager manages and controls communication.
I do agree that lack of communication can cause many issues in any aspect of life, especially at work and in teams. For a project, communication should be dependent on everyone in the project and organization. The organization has to be communicative with everyone on what they’re doing for their projects and what workload they have. Even if certain people aren’t in a project, it should be apparent on how much they can handle so if they were to be pulled into a project midway, it would be apparent to the team if they can depend on them or not. Even in teams, each member should say what they have issues on, how far they are getting, and their progress for each task to make sure the project is moving along correctly. Communication is not dependent on one person. The project manager can help with communication by having weekly meetings with the group to discuss the progress too. For the means and platforms of communication in a professional situation would be to have a breakdown of what each person is doing and what the task is and who to report it too. At my company, we use Smartsheet which is online, to know how long we have for each task as well as who is doing and it who’s looking over it. We also have weekly progress meetings to see where we are with each task and if the timeline needs to be adjusted. Other forms of communication can be used with Skype, Microsoft Team, and WebEx to have meetings with clients or other vendors as well as people who are working from another state. Sharing screens and progress has been more efficient in this way than just explaining how far you are in the project.
Communication management is crucial for succeeding in a project and achieving the goal of the organization. It is very important for increasing the possibility of the project to meetup the requirements. Communication between the team members is more essential to make out more deliverables and clear cutout planning process, at the initial stage rather at the final stage. It is the project manager’s role to look up how the communication is between the team members and he should communicate with the stakeholders with the insights of the project. Thus without clear communication, the process in the development of the project from conception to completion would be seriously constrained.
I think communication is very important when it comes to a project team. I think everyone should be able to communicate but also the project manager should make sure there is effective communication between the members. If there is a lack of communication between a project team it can be detrimental to the overall project. Communication is needed to make sure everyone is on the same page especially if there are many different tasks trying to be accomplished at once. There are many platforms that can be used to communicate. An application as simple as email can be used or even video chatting to have meetings without having to all be in the same room.
@gokulravichandran i totally agree with you. The PM have an essential role in all communication. As the communication plan should state how the communication must be done and recorded. Now a day, the most effective way is using emails, and some chat apps such as slack where the whole team can be in one group to communicate. Communication skills is a must skill that each team member should have.
I believe that one person should represent the work their team is doing, a leader who can present a combiniation of all the works each group in a project team is working on to compile and distribute to other groups of the team. It is the job of the PM to have all teams communcating with other groups that are vital to have the project move forward. Regarding platform of communication, it is all preference as to what the group may be working on and where the group may be working from. Face to face, video conferences, email or other messaging platforms can all be possible interfaces.
The project manager should not be the sole communicator, but should instead effectively encourage the communication of groups and bring together those who should be communicating together. I agree with the posts above which mention everyone on a project should be doing the communication. Not only is communication from the leader important, but the team members should communicate any problems encountered or updates on the project in order for the project manager to gauge the progress of the project more accurately. Therefore, it is usually not just one side that should effectively communicate. I would like to add that an effective communicator not only communicates effectively, but will engage others to communicate as well, making communication two-sided. In terms of platforms for this, previous posts have stated various online platforms and the most popular being email. In the case of emergencies where workers cannot go to the job site, then online group meetings are crucial (such as the now popular Zoom platform).
Communication Management seems like a trivial knowledge area however, its seems as though it needs to be implemented in a PM. This topic of communication is critical. Lack of communication is why we have so many issues with marriages, friends, etc.. Which has been the fault of humans since day 0. We all communicate daily wither facebook messenger, twitter, texting, email etc or literally Face to Face which is a lost art. However, in order to have a successful project, you need to know what various project groups are doing in order to have a clear and concise line of communication. Issues arise because someone forgot to tell this person so on and so forth.
I have two questions:
1) Who should do the communication on a project dependent on the organization set-up
2) What means or platform should be done to communicate in a professional situation?
The communication between project groups and within groups is essential to complete a project on time and efficiently. All team members are responsible for communicating their tasks and issues to each other, not just the project manager. It is difficult to always have a face to face meeting with everyone, considering jobs are now becoming remote or vendors are too far away to travel for a single meeting; the best way to combat this issue is to have video chat meetings through the company's available programs (Microsoft Teams, Skype, etc). Since we're mainly working with technology, it is possible to reach out to someone and get a timely response too. However, the project manager should be the one to reach out to the team on an appropriate basis (whether it is by email or virtual meetings) to see the progress with the team's tasks and issues, as well as brief them on anything necessary.
Although my team eventually found success in our senior design capstone project, we faced many hurdles throughout the year that were brought on by inadequate communication. We developed and implemented a communication management plan during the preliminary planning phase of our project, however our plan was not sufficient in remediating the communication issues that we experienced in later project phases. Our main issue was maintaining consistent communication with our project sponsor because they kept changing the employee who was assisting our group. Throughout the entirety of the project, the sponsor changed this employee about four times. Rather than giving us one person to contact during the project, I think this lack of communication could have been avoided if the sponsor gave us more than one employee to contact. Regarding the first question, our sponsor relied on just one employee to manage our project. They did not anticipate what would happen if that one employee became overwhelmed and could not continue to manage our project. In this circumstance, it would have been beneficial to provide multiple contacts in case their main contact was unavailable. Regarding the second question, my team found much success in utilizing email to schedule and document face to face meetings, phone meetings, and video conferences.
It is important during a project that all members of the team are aware of what communication is expected of them, and how often, and this can definitely depend on the company's organization. For instance, during a project I worked on, the engineers including myself were responsible for contacting suppliers if we had questions about their component specifications. This would usually be done by e-mail. Then if we experienced difficulty getting a response from the supplier, the Purchasing department would step in for support, usually with a more direct form of contact such as over the phone or a Skype call. The specific member of the purchasing team who was tasked with supporting our project team was decided from the get-go. However, at a very small organization, this role of communicating with vendors might fully fall on the engineers in the project team, so the PM must consider the company's organization when developing the communications plan.
I agree with @jea42 opinion about the communication platform. For my team, we prefer in-person meetings but unfortunately due to the coronavirus and the social distancing rules, my team has been using WebEx as the main communication platform and it has been working great for keeping the whole department on the same page. Communication is one of the most important keys that drives the team to success.
1) In my opinion, the project leader or person accountable for the thing being emailed about should be the person to communicate. They would probably want to be the ones communicating anyways because they want to make sure everyone hears the right orders.
2) Most of the time people communicate over email or with work cell phone. People should not communicate over facebook or social media platforms about work. The goal is to communicate in a place where there is record of the conversation and in a place that is a professional setting where it is normal to talk about work.
