Speaker 1: Your project communication plan is the blueprint to success for any project. They cite that most projects fail because they have a really poor communication plan or none at all. And in this video I'm going to share with you how to create an excellent project communication plan. And if you want to be a project ninja I need you to stay tuned to the end of this video because I have something really cool for you, an amazing checklist and download as to why projects fail. Hi if you're new here welcome my name is Adriana Gertler and on this channel you're gonna get the best project management and career advice. Please consider subscribing as it helps us grow this awesome community. So if you're excited about learning how to create an awesome project communication plan like this video as it tells YouTube that we're giving you great content and let's get to it. Communication plan 101. Okay what is a project communication plan? It actually is a document that lays out all the types of communication that you're gonna have within your project. And it also lays out who are the stakeholders who are gonna receive that types of communication. Now stakeholders don't forget range from anyone within your team all the way out to let's say senior executives who are just on the peripheral edge. It could also be the end user of that project deliverable. Now why is this so important? You're probably saying to yourself, Adriana I am so busy seriously you want me to do a communication plan on top of all the other plans I have to do? The answer is yes absolutely. I'm telling you it's gonna save a lot of headaches and heartaches within your project. Now good communication really does equate to good project success. How many times have you been on a project that people assume stuff? It really does hurt the project so that is why it is so critical for you as a project manager or project lead to ensure you have a really good strong communication plan. What's in a communication plan? Good news for you I actually have an example for you and we're gonna walk through it. Let's go. So here's your project communication plan. It really is a summary document of all the types of communications you are going to be doing within your project during the execution phase of everything. So this is a little summary. It's a matrix. I do mine in a PowerPoint. You can do it in a Word document. Whatever is gonna suit your needs. There's no right or wrong. It really is just summarizing how you're gonna do your communication to all of your project stakeholders. So let's talk about each section here so you understand what exactly you do in it. So communication method. This is a type of communication. You really have to think it through. How am I gonna communicate with people? And not everybody deserves the same type of communication. You're definitely gonna be talking to your project team a lot differently than you're gonna be talking to your steering committee, than to senior executives, even to the department or manager who's going to be receiving your deliverable. And how you're gonna communicate to them is so much different. Your communication purpose is why is this type of communication being sent? You really need to have an understanding of this as this is gonna help you understand a whole bunch of other aspects like content and frequency and stuff like that. You're gonna also say who's going to create the content. So this is content creation. A lot of times when it comes to communication it usually falls on the shoulders of the project manager. But sometimes it has to be other individuals. So this is where you're gonna really lay it out. Content confirmation. Who's gonna check it? So how do you know that the information has gone out is correct? Now for some instances it doesn't matter about content creation because it's staying within the project team and it's not being distributed or disseminated to anybody else. But if it is you want to make sure that those things are checked and everything is okay from a standpoint of acceptability, from communication standards, company standards, things of that nature. Content distribution and recipients. So who's gonna send it out and who will receive it? Again not all communication is gonna be sent from the same individual. I may have an announcement that I created and that I need the president of the organization to send on my behalf from a project communication standpoint. If I want to give some like an announcement to an organization of what's going on. Again it really is dependent on your type of communication. Additional comments. So those are your attachment. Who needs to be CC'd? And method to check understanding. How do you know that your communication was read and understood? This does not have to be detailed. This does not have to be complex. Just a simple outline summary sheet can make a huge world of a difference as to how successful you're gonna be with your project. Because I've said this before communication is the heartbeat to a really good successful project. So now what I want to show you is I want to share with you some types of communication. This is not an exhaustive list. All right it's not. It's just an example so you can have an understanding as to what are some of the things. So let's look at some of this in a little bit more detail. So we have a project SharePoint site. Microsoft Teams. We have a work breakdown structure and action plan. We have core team meetings. Project status update. So you can have a lot more stuff in here. You can actually lay out every type of meeting you're gonna have. You can actually lay out some even change management aspects as to how are you gonna make announcements to end users depending on what your project is. But again for sake of simplicity I just want to share with you a few so I can explain how you fill the rest out. So let's take a look at project SharePoint site and go into a little more detail because again I do mine in a PowerPoint. I slip it into my charter and as a project manager this is my job to decide how is communication gonna be unfolding in this project. And there may be some instances where you want to bring in your team to ask them for some feedback particularly if you're going into a lot of in-depth change management aspects which are talking about end users and the communication and training that you need for them. But if you take my SLA project management course which I've put the link underneath this video I actually talk about all of that in great detail so I'm not going to go into it here. So if you want more information definitely check out that link. So let's talk about this project SharePoint site. I'm a big believer in having a central location and for us why is this communication even being done because it is the central place of our project. It's where we have all our documentation, we track everything, we even communicate in it. And so who's going to create this content for the SharePoint site? Well this document uploads and it's the manager, the project manager, and the project team who's going to do this. And who's going to check the content? Well WBS which is my action plan, I check that content and for documents everybody else does. Now under content distribution and recipients there's no content to be sent only uploaded and updated by everybody and that the recipients is just the project team. Remember what I said earlier every single part or every single piece of communication doesn't necessarily have to be distributed to every single stakeholder. You can have specific pieces or types of communications for specific stakeholders that's absolutely acceptable. And then we're not having any attachments and how do we know that everyone read and understood is we're having an assumption that people are actually following our ways of working. So that's one type of communication method. It's not your traditional communication method but it definitely is how this project is communicating is we're really using it as a point of reference and information. So let's talk about Microsoft Teams. This here if we take a look over this column is for every single stakeholder. This is where we're communicating and we're tracking status and we're having conversations in video screen sharing. And we're doing this to keep everyone in the loop so everyone can have the ability to do it. No one necessarily has to manage it it's the conversation you start in the posts and with chats and it's a lovely way to ensure that everyone is really kept in the loop in real time. So that's something else we're doing as a project as part of our project communication plan. Now your action plan some people may not think to put the action plan because a lot of times when we think of communication plans we're thinking outside of our project team. We're thinking of the end users and yes you can definitely do this. What I'm showing you here really is more of internal project communication ways of working. But it's just as important as our external ones which is usually like to the end user or the individual department who is receiving the deliverable. So why do I put my action plan here? Well as I said before I have a course like project management and I use a WBS very heavily. It is the heartbeat of the project and I not only use it to track tasks but I use it to communicate as well on status. I do not hold status update meetings. We actually use a WBS to be monitoring all of that and that's why this is part of our communication is because we have to have an idea as to how we are going to go about using it. And we use it with a color coding system and a comment column where based on those tasks updates can be given. I can ask questions and then mark my comments in green so that my team now knows that I've just spoken to them and vice versa they can speak to me by making their comments orange and it really is an amazing tool and a simple tool actually. You don't need software or anything like that just Excel spreadsheet that everyone can utilize and use and be involved with. It's a really great accountability tool but it is part of my project communication. We have core team meetings now you can have as many meetings as you want here but you can see exactly who I've included in on the meetings the expectations of them and just for the last example I want to show you is project status updates frequency monthly. So this again if you take a look at our content distribution column and recipients every stakeholder can get this. I'm the one as a project manager is creating the content with some of my team leads. I'm confirming it we're giving the monthly updates and I am assuming people have read it. I'm not going to follow up with them in it but they have access through emails and SharePoint sites and things like that depending on how I'm going to house my update. But here is a project communication plan very simple very straightforward. You as a project management manager create this but it's so worthwhile because it lets everybody know how things are going to unfold. How to use your communication plan. Like I said in the example you're going to slip it into your charter and you're going to present it at your project kickoff meeting. Now if you want more information on charters and project kickoff meetings just go to YouTube search Adriana Girdler project kickoff because I have a video specifically on that or Adriana Girdler charters because I have a video on that. Now it's really imperative that by doing it at this point in time you're basically setting everything up from scratch and actually at the start in a very positive way. You're communicating already. You can set up all your meetings you can already direct people to the SharePoint site. All of that amazing stuff which is just going to ensure your success. Remember project communication or just communication in general is what is going to ensure that everyone is on board no assumptions are being made and you're actually going to deliver really well on that project goal. Now if you want even more tips on how to be a project ninja like I told you at the beginning of this video here for you is like chocked full of information and I put it in the link underneath this YouTube video so I promise you please go get it and I promise you it's just filled with amazing stuff whether you do projects or not this is just really good for business in general so please check it out. If you learn something new in this video please get this video a thumbs up share it with everyone we really appreciate it because it helps our community grow giving you more great content. On that note if you have any comments do you do project communication plans have you seen some really good ones maybe some bad ones you have any other suggestions that you would put in it let me know in the comments below until the next video see you later