Information Technology Project

Management, Seventh Edition

Note: See the text itself for full citations.

  Understand the importance of good
communications on projects and the need to
develop soft skills, especially for IT project
managers and their teams
 Review key concepts related to communications
 Explain the elements of planning project
communications and how to create a
communications management plan
 Describe how to manage communications,
including communication technologies, media, and
performance reporting

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  Discuss methods for controlling communications
to ensure that information needs are met
throughout the life of the project
 List various methods for improving project
communications, such as running effective
meetings, using various technologies effectively,
and using templates
 Describe how software can enhance project
communications management

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  The greatest threat to many projects is a failure to
communicate
 Our culture does not portray IT professionals as
being good communicators
 Research shows that IT professionals must be able
to communicate effectively to succeed in their
positions
 Strong verbal and non-technical skills are a key
factor in career advancement for IT professionals

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  Planning communications management:
Determining the information and communications
needs of the stakeholders
 Managing communications: Creating,
distributing, storing, retrieving, and disposing of
project communications based on the
communications management plan
 Controlling communications: Monitoring and
controlling project communications to ensure that
stakeholder communication needs are met

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  Project managers say they spend as much as 90
percent of their time communicating
 Need to focus on group and individual
communication needs
 Use formal and informal methods for
communicating
 Distribute important information in an effective and
timely manner
 Set the stage for communicating bad news
 Determine the number of communication channels

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  People are not interchangeable parts

 As illustrated in Brooks’ book The Mythical Man-

Month, you cannot assume that a task originally
scheduled to take two months of one person’s time
can be done in one month by two people

 Nine women cannot produce a baby in one month!

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  Research says that in a face-to-face interaction:
 58 percent of communication is through body language.
 35 percent of communication is through how the words are
said
 7 percent of communication is through the content or
words that are spoken
 Pay attention to more than just the actual words
someone is saying
 A person’s tone of voice and body language say a
lot about how he or she really feels

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  Introverts like more private communications, while
extroverts like to discuss things in public
 Intuitive people like to understand the big picture,
while sensing people need step-by-step details
 Thinkers want to know the logic behind decisions,
while feeling people want to know how something
affects them personally
 Judging people are driven to meet deadlines while
perceiving people need more help in developing
and following plans

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  Short, frequent meetings are often very effective in
IT projects

 Stand-up meetings force people to focus on what

they really need to communicate

 Some companies have policies preventing the use

of e-mail between certain hours or even entire days
of the week

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 Amusing examples of miscommunications are common, especially when
they involve the use of new technologies. For example, I was teaching
an introductory course in information systems several years ago. Other
instructors would often sit in on the course to learn how to use the latest
software applications. One day, students were learning how to adjust
settings and use short cuts on their computers. I would tell the students
to “right-click” and then select Properties, or “right-click” and then select
Copy. At the end of the class, an instructor quietly approached, waited
until the other students were gone, and then said, “I don’t know what I’m
doing wrong.” She held up a piece of paper on which she had written the
word “click” about a dozen times. In other words, she literally did write
“click” when told to do so instead of right-clicking. I asked, “Are you a
Mac user?” Macintosh computers do not normally have a mouse with
two buttons, so users never have to right-click. I showed the instructor
how to right-click a mouse, and in future classes made sure to point out
operations that were different on PCs than Macs.

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  Don’t bury crucial information

 Don’t be afraid to report bad information

 Oral communication via meetings and informal talks

helps bring important information—good and bad—
out into the open

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  Rarely does the receiver interpret a message
exactly as the sender intended

 Geographic location and cultural background affect

the complexity of project communications
◦ Different working hours

◦ Language barriers

◦ Different cultural norms

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 Dear Mom and Dad, or should I say Grandma & Grandpa,
Yes, I am pregnant. No, I’m not married yet since Larry, my boyfriend, is out of a
job. Larry’s employers just don’t seem to appreciate the skills he has learned
since he quit high school. Larry looks much younger than you, Dad, even though
he is three years older. I’m quitting college and getting a job so we can get an
apartment before the baby is born. I found a beautiful apartment above a 24-hour
auto repair garage with good insulation so the exhaust fumes and noise won’t
bother us.
I’m very happy. I thought you would be too.
Love, Ashley
P.S. There is no Larry. I’m not pregnant. I’m not getting married. I’m not quitting
school, but I am getting a “D” in Chemistry. I just wanted you to have some
perspective.

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  As the number of people involved increases, the
complexity of communications increases because
there are more communications channels or
pathways through which people can communicate.
 Number of communications channels = n(n-1)
2
where n is the number of people involved

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  Every project should include some type of
communications management plan, a document
that guides project communications
 The communications management plan varies
with the needs of the project, but some type of
written plan should always be prepared
 For small projects, the communications
management plan can be part of the team contract
 For large projects, it should be a separate
document

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 1. Stakeholder communications requirements
2. Information to be communicated, including format,
content, and level of detail
3. Who will receive the information and who will produce it
4. Suggested methods or technologies for conveying the
information
5. Frequency of communication
6. Escalation procedures for resolving issues
7. Revision procedures for updating the communications
management plan
8. A glossary of common terminology

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  Managing communications is a large part of a
project manager’s job
 Getting project information to the right people at
the right time and in a useful format is just as
important as developing the information in the first
place
 Important considerations include the use of
technology, the appropriate methods and media to
use, and performance reporting

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  Technology can facilitate the process of creating
and distributing information, when used properly
 It is important to select the appropriate
communication method and media

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  Natural disasters often disrupt communications
around the world. For example, the scale of the
damage to Japan’s communications infrastructure
after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake in March 2011
was unprecedented. Fortunately, thousands of
employees from NTT East worked around the
clock to restore communications. As a result of
their efforts, 4.75 million public phone calls were
made on the day after the disaster.

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  Interactive communication: Two or more people interact
to exchange information via meetings, phone calls, or
video conferencing. Most effective way to ensure
common understanding
 Push communication: Information is sent or pushed to
recipients without their request via reports, e-mails,
faxes, voice mails, and other means. Ensures that the
information is distributed, but does not ensure that it was
received or understood
 Pull communication: Information is sent to recipients at
their request via Web sites, bulletin boards, e-learning,
knowledge repositories like blogs, and other means

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  Collaboration is a key driver of overall performance of
companies around the world
 Of all the collaboration technologies that were studied, three
were more commonly present in high-performing companies
than in low-performing ones: Web conferencing, audio
conferencing, and meeting-scheduler technologies
 “This study reveals a powerful new metric business leaders
can use to more successfully manage their companies and
achieve competitive advantage,” said Brian Cotton, a vice
president at Frost & Sullivan*
 The study also showed that there are regional differences in
how people in various countries prefer to communicate with
one another
*Frost & Sullivan, “New Research Reveals Collaboration Is a Key Driver of Business
Performance Around the World,” Microsoft PressPass (June 5, 2006).

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 Performance reporting keeps stakeholders informed
about how resources are being used to achieve
project objectives
◦ Status reports describe where the project stands at a
specific point in time

◦ Progress reports describe what the project team has

accomplished during a certain period of time

◦ Forecasts predict future project status and progress based

on past information and trends

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  The main goal of controlling communications is to ensure
the optimal flow of information throughout the entire project
life cycle
 The project manager and project team should use their
various reporting systems, expert judgment, and meetings
to assess how well communications are working. If
problems exist, the project manager and team need to take
action, which often requires changes to the earlier
processes of planning and managing project
communications
 It is often beneficial to have a facilitator from outside the
project team assess how well communications are working

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  Develop better communication skills

 Run effective meetings

 Use e-mail and other technologies effectively

 Use templates for project communications

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  Most companies spend a lot of money on technical
training for their employees, even when employees
might benefit more from communications training
 Individual employees are also more likely to enroll
voluntarily in classes to learn the latest technology
than in classes that develop soft skills
 As organizations become more global, they realize
they must invest in ways to improve communication
with people from different countries and cultures
 It takes leadership to improve communication
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  Communications technology, such as using e-mail and
searching the Web, should help improve project
communications, but it can also cause conflict
 How? Cyberslackers are people who should be working,
but instead spend their time online doing non-work-related
activities, such as annoying friends or co-workers by
sending unimportant e-mails
 A study by Websense suggested that employees are using
the Web more and more for personal reasons, and it is
costing U.S. companies $178 billion annually, or $5,000
per employee
 A 2008 survey found that more than a quarter of U.S.
employers have fired workers for misusing e-mail and one-
third have fired workers for misusing the Internet on the job

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  Determine if a meeting can be avoided
 Define the purpose and intended outcome of the
meeting
 Determine who should attend the meeting
 Provide an agenda to participants before the
meeting
 Prepare handouts and visual aids, and make
logistical arrangements ahead of time
 Run the meeting professionally
 Set the ground rules for the meeting
 Build relationships
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  Make sure that e-mail, instant messaging, texting,
or collaborative tools are an appropriate medium
for what you want to communicate
 Be sure to send information to the right people
 Use meaningful subject lines and limit the content
of emails to one main subject, and be as clear
and concise as possible
 Be sure to authorize the right people to share and
edit your collaborative documents

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  A SharePoint portal allows users to create
custom Web sites to access documents and
applications stored on shared devices
 Google Docs allow users to create, share, and
edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations
online
 A wiki is a Web site designed to enable anyone
who accesses it to contribute or modify Web page
content

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  Alaska Airlines uses secure project wikis to
facilitate project communications and
collaborations
 Benefits include:
◦ Better documentation
◦ Improved trust and information sharing
◦ Sustained growth
 The Alaska Airlines IT department even created a
“Mother of All Wikis” to serve as an index for all the
known project wikis

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  Many technical people are afraid to ask for help

 Providing examples and templates for project

communications saves time and money

 Organizations can develop their own templates, use

some provided by outside organizations, or use
samples from textbooks

 Recall that research shows that companies that

excel in project management make effective use of
templates

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  The project manager and project team members
should each prepare a lessons-learned report
◦ A reflective statement that documents important things an
individual learned from working on the project

 The project manager often combines information

from all of the lessons-learned reports into a
project summary report

 See template and sample in Chapter 3

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  It is also important to organize and prepare project
archives
 Project archives are a complete set of organized
project records that provide an accurate history of
the project
 These archives can provide valuable information
for future projects as well

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  Many project teams create a project Web site to
store important product documents and other
information
 Can create the site using various types of
software, such as enterprise project management
software

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  There are many software tools to aid in project
communications
 Today many people telecommute or work remotely at least
part-time. TechCast at George Washington University
forecasts that by 2019, 30 percent of U.S. private-sector
workers could work from home
 Project management software includes new capabilities to
enhance virtual communications
 While technology can aid in the communications process, it
is not the most important. Far more important is improving
an organization’s ability to communicate, which often
involves cultural change

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  The goal of project communications management
is to ensure timely and appropriate generation,
collection, dissemination, storage, and disposition
of project information
 Main process include:
◦ Plan communications management
◦ Manage communications
◦ Control communications

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