It is a clich\u00e9d topic \u2013 communication. However, in spite of countless books and training sessions people often miss the mark when it comes to communication FOR a project.\u00a0 I have seen many projects that were derailed because of how status and risks were (or were not) communicated.\u00a0 Over the years I have established a set of rules for myself so that I remove a key risk out of my projects early \u2013 communication. \u00a0Here are my rules to ensure success the of my projects:<\/p>\n
Rule 1: Notify team members<\/strong><\/p>\n Establish the team and communicate to the team members that they are part of the project.\u00a0 This may sound silly, but I have had instances where team members in different teams did not know that they were contributing to the same project. It is important for the entire team to understand the end goal of what they are working on. Although not the complete responsibility of the project manager, this makes a big difference.<\/p>\n Rule 2: Don\u2019t communicate to everyone the same way<\/strong><\/p>\n Not all projects call for a weekly status meeting. Often the engineers \u2013 the people actually doing the work \u2013 don\u2019t care much for the status meetings that are meant for the executives. At the same time the executives do not have the time to get into the engineering details of the project. It is important that the project manager understand this and tailor the communication to suit the group of people who receive the communication. A big meeting with everyone involved is usually a waste of time.<\/p>\n Rule 3: Establish a communication routine<\/strong><\/p>\n Once you identify what to communicate to whom, establish a routine.\u00a0 Conduct the meeting (or send out the status email) around the same time each interval (weekly\/bi-weekly etc). The interval depends on the person(s) involved and the kind of project<\/strong><\/p>\n Rule 4: Re-iterate the goal (s) of the project – repeatedly<\/strong><\/p>\n Individuals encounter numerous problems in getting their tasks done during a project.\u00a0 For projects that span multiple months, there is a tendency to lose focus and go off on a tangent to address a different problem altogether.\u00a0 For example, in addressing performance issues related to a piece of software, individuals can end up evaluating new hardware to upgrade the infrastructure. These things can happen very easily if a project manager does not maintain the focus of the team on the problem at hand \u2013 the reason the current project actually exists!<\/p>\n Do you have any such rules that you religiously follow?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is a clich\u00e9d topic \u2013 communication. However, in spite of countless books and training sessions people often miss the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1504,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-communications"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1504"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}