Week $11$

Weekly Introduction and OverviewWeekly Introduction and Overview

Welcome to Week $11$ Project Communication and Documentation

This week, we will be studying communications and project documentation. Managing communications is an important aspect of project management and vital to project success. No amount of technical prowess or skill can replace effective communication skills in a project. Many consider communication as the most critical component of project management. Therefore, having excellent communication skills is an important attribute of a successful Project Manager. Remember that, as a Project Manager, you are there to guide the processes and coordinate the resources. To do this successfully, a well$-$defined communication plan along with good communication skills are necessary. Therefore, having good communication skills is just as important to each project team member as it is for the Project Manager.

In our global economy, many teams are dispersed throughout the world. They frequently complete their projects without meeting one another in person, making communication even more important. Even when team members are co$-$located as they are in traditional projects, communication is still key to success. When it comes to communication, the Project Manager must communicate early and often with all stakeholders.

This week, in addition to contributing to our discussion forum, you will have the opportunity to develop a project communication plan.

Weekly Outcomes

At the end of this week, you will be able to:

Discuss and apply techniques to enhance personal verbal and written communication.

Describe barriers to effective listening, and apply techniques to improve listening and understanding.

Prepare for and facilitate effective project meetings and make informative and interesting presentations.

Prepare useful, readable, and understandable reports.

Explain how to control changes to project documents.

Create a project communication plan.

Communicate effectively with project stakeholders and describe collaborative tools for enhancing communication on projects.

Weekly Agenda

Weekly Introduction and Overview

Content in Context

Assignments

$11\mathrm{.}1$ Discussion Board $-$ Team and Stakeholder Communication $(10$ points$)$

$11\mathrm{.}2$ Writing Assignment $-$ Communication Plan $(30$ Points$)$

Ask Yourself $($Student Forum$)$

Reflections

Content in ContextContent in Context

Read:

Successful Project Management $(7$th Edition$),$ Gido, Clements, Baker

Chapter Twelve $($Communications and Documentation$)$

Watch:

Project Communication Plan: Key To Effective Communication In Projects, ProjectManager, February $2012$

Project Management: Creating a Communications Plan, ProjectManager, April $2014$

$11\mathrm{.}1$ Discussion Board $$ Team and Stakeholder Communication $(10$ Points$)$

$11\mathrm{.}1$ Discussion Board $$ Team and Stakeholder Communication $(10$ Points$)$

Address one of the topics or situations below:

Team interaction$/$communication

Background:

Your team does not seem to communicate with each other, even though they are dependent upon one another to complete project deliverables.

You and the team have missed two important deadlines by more than a week. Each instance was due to this lack of communication.

Starting with a tight time frame for the project, you have had to re$-$baseline the project due to the delays, and now you will not meet the target date for your delivery.

You are positive that improving communication can resolve these issues, and the team will be able to make up some of the lost time.

As the project manager, discuss steps you would take to improve communications while ensuring you have no additional delays due to ineffective team communication.

Stakeholder communication

Background:

As the Project Manager for a website portal project, you have decided to hold weekly status and progress meetings for your stakeholders.

In past projects, you approached these meetings by just $$winging it$$ to see what, if any, spontaneous discussions would occur.

For the most part, this approach seemed to work; however, there were times when the discussion topics wandered off$-$topic, and the meeting became more of a social gathering rather than a stakeholder$$s support meeting.

There were times when your supervisor and key stakeholders cited you for not accomplishing anything with these meetings.

With this project, you have a maximum of one hour for these meetings, and many stakeholders devote their time to attending; they view having updates on the project activities and achievements as very important.

Discuss your approach to these project meetings. Your goal is to keep the meetings on track and update your stakeholders.

Collaboration Tools

Your manager has asked that you lead a project across multiple groups, both internal and external, for your organization. You will need to share documents with these team members.

What collaboration tools could you use for this?

Do you have experience sharing files and folders with ot