Comments (22)

By elroyking, August 27, 2010 8:29 am

If you manage projects, then you will know that to succeed, you need to communicate clearly with all of your project stakeholders. Otherwise your staff will lack clear direction, team morale will be low and your project may deliver over schedule and exceed its budget.

To make sure that your projects communicate effectively, we have described here…

How to Create a Communications Plan

Using the Communications Plan template , we have described how to create a bullet-proof Communications Plan for projects. We have provided a snapshot of this template here by listing the 10 steps you need to take to create a Communications Plan for your project.

Step 1: Situation Analysis
The first step to take when creating a Communications Plan is to perform a Situation Analysis. This is a fancy term for researching your existing communications environment.

Review the performance of all communications within your project and identify the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

Then identify any lessons learned from past communications exercises, so that the same mistakes made in the past are not repeated here.

Step 2: Communications Objectives
Great. So you know what your communications strengths are and where you need to improve. You are now ready to set out your communications objectives.

List the top three objectives that you want to achieve from your project communications. For instance, you might want to inform stakeholders of the project progress, boost management buy-in or improve your team productivity.

Step 3: Communications Guidelines
Then set out your communications guidelines for controlling communications within your project. For example, you may decide that:

* All messages will be distributed through pre-defined channels
* All critical communications will be pre-approved by management
* All communications will be tailored, based on stakeholder needs

Step 4: Target Audience
Now define exactly who it is that your team will formally communicate with. Remember, formal communications are a method for controlling the messages sent out by your team. They promote a single consistent view of your project to a specified audience so that “everyone has the same version of the truth”.

Step 5: Stakeholder Needs
Each target audience group will have their own needs. These stakeholders will require information that is specific to their role in the project. For instance, a Project Sponsor will need to be informed of high priority risks and issues, whereas a Quality Reviewer might need to be notified of the current status of project deliverables.

Step 6: Key Messages
Then list the key messages that need to be sent to each Stakeholder. Key messages may include project status, project issues, project risks, project deliverables or project resources. The next step is to define how you will deliver each message to them, through a delivery channel.

Step 7: Delivery Channels
There are a huge variety of ways in which you can deliver your key messages to stakeholders (e.g. emails, newsletters, meetings, conferences). For each stakeholder, identify the channel that you will use to deliver your key messages.

Step 8: Communications Schedule
Now you are ready to create the schedule of communications events, activities and actions that are required to deliver the right messages to the right people at the right time throughout the project. Create a detailed schedule of events and for each item listed, specify the timeframes for completion and any dependencies on other events in the schedule.

Step 9: Communications Events
For each event listed in your schedule, describe it in depth. Make sure that you define the purpose of the event, how it will take place and when it should occur.

Step 10: Communications Matrix
And finally, once you have listed the events and described them in detail, you need to identify who will manage them and who will review their effectiveness. Create a Communications Matrix which lists for each event who is accountable for the event, who will take part and who will review its success.

Once you have taken these 10 steps, it is up to you to get your Communications Plan approved by your manager and then execute it to deliver communications efficiently across your project.

And just one last tip – to improve your communications you need honest feedback on your team’s performance. Implement feedback measures such as questionnaires, feedback forms and surveys to learn how to continually improve communications within your project team.

To plan communications for your projects…

Download this Communications Plan template now.

Download the entire kit of Project Management templates

Elroy King

You really can be ready for the PMP Exam with help from PMExamReady.com. It is THE place to get ready for the PMP Exam.

Pass the PMP exam the EASY way with the BEST PMP exam prep course from a PMI approved source — PMP Exam Prep Made Easy.

Share this:

Comments (3)

By elroyking, August 25, 2010 7:51 am

Method123 has just announced today the release of their newest full featured Project Management Template – the Quality Management Process template.
The Quality Management Process helps the project manager and team set up how quality will be handled and measured on the project. With the proper quality procedures in place, your customer will be assured of receiving a quality solution, quality deliverables and will gain significant confidence in your delivery team. Knowing their project dollars aren’t being left to chance will make them want to come back to your organization for more successful work in the future.
Indeed, project quality is difficult to measure and even harder to guarantee. With a Quality Management Process in place during the Project Planning project planning process, your organization will be able to boast to customers about the repeatable processes that are being incorporated into their projects across the board.
“Quality is something that should be ingrained in the Project Management Methodology throughout the entire engagement,” states Jason Westland, CEO and president of Method123 Ltd. “Our Quality Management Process template will help your organization setup the proper quality infrastructure to manage all of their projects for their customers. It’s an ongoing win for your organization, far beyond just your current project.”
With Method123′s Quality Management Process, an organization can create their own quality assurance policies and implement them smoothly so that positive progress is realized on all projects going forward. It will increase executive leadership’s confidence in the quality of your deliverables and provide great returns in the form of customer confidence and satisfaction as well as repeat business.
With the Quality Management Process template, the Project Manager and organization will be able to:
View data
– Define project quality goals to be met by projects and team members
– Plan for how performance against quality goals will be measured and reported– Identify corrective action to take on quality issues– Target areas for quality improvements– Create reports on overall project and deliverable quality throughout the entire project portfolio
– Define project quality goals to be met by projects and team members — Plan for how performance against quality goals will be measured and reported — Identify corrective action to take on quality issues — Target areas for quality improvements — Create reports on overall project and deliverable quality throughout the entire project portfolio
The Quality Management Process will help you:
– Define and perform quality assurance tests and checks
– Better prepare for acceptance testing and approvals
– Take certain quality control measures
– Identify areas for improvement and begin to take action

“In this economy surviving in the midst of stiff competition is difficult and never a sure thing. Any edge is a good edge,” says Westland. “Many companies are sacrificing quality to allow for price cuts. Customers still want quality and when they see companies taking great measures to ensure that, it can mean the difference between retaining customers and losing customers. Use our Quality Management Process to make sure you’re company is creating quality deliverables and outputs on their projects. The customer is important and this is one way you can really show them that and shine.”
The Quality Management Process template and the full Project Management Kit product offering are both available for purchase and download at Method123′s website.

———————————————

Quality Management is one of nine project management knowledge area covered in the Project Managment Institute’s (PMI) Guide to The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK guide v4). For more info on the PMBOK guide see The PMBOK Guide.

You really can be ready for the PMP Exam with help from PMExamReady.com. It is THE place to get ready for the PMP Exam.

Pass the PMP exam the EASY way with the BEST PMP exam prep course from a PMI approved source — PMP Exam Prep Made Easy.

Elroy King

Share this:

Comments (2)

By elroyking, August 13, 2010 8:44 am

What is your process for estimating time and cost on your projects? Are you like a lot of project managers, just guessing and crossing your fingers? Estimating is an art, and as a project manager it really isn’t your job to actually do the estimating, you need the experts involved to do the estimating, meaning those that are going to do the work should help you come up with the estimates. There are three types of estimating that might help you out here.

Analogues Estimates

Each project will be unique, without a doubt, but this project may be like one that your company has done before. You may even be a assigned a number of the resources that worked on the similar project. If this project is like the last one, but bigger–then you can take the actual time and cost from some of the activities and estimate what this one will cost by using the old numbers and multiplying them by the percent bigger this project appears to be. This is the concept behind analogues estimating and can usually pretty good depending on how similar this project really is.

Parametric Estimates

These estimates assume that you can break down the activity into single units. If you have an estimate for how much and how long putting down, say, 10 square feet of tile will take, then you can multiply that number by the number of square feet in the building to get a good estimate of time and cost. The key is to find a small unit that can serve as the base for determining the entire job.

Three-Point Estimating (PERT)

Three-point estimating is also popular. You go to your expert and ask what the optimistic estimate for time and cost would be, then ask for the pessimistic estimate, taking into consideration the worst case scenario. Finally ask for the most likely estimate. The formula for getting a weighted average from these figures is the following:

Opimistic + 4 times Most Likely + Pessimistic

6

By dividing by six, the sum of the optimistic estimate, the four times the most likely estimate and the pessimistic estimate create a weighted average that could be closer to the real time and cost for the activity.

Keep in mind that these estimates will have to be revised as time goes on. This process is called Progressive Elaboration. It simply means that we get more precise and more detailed as we progressively know more about the project and the details.

I hope this helps in the ever difficult art of cost and schedule estimation.

Elroy King

If you have any Project Management questions or questions about the PMP exam, leave them as a comment, and I will try to answer the questions.

You really can be ready for the PMP Exam with help from PM ExamReady.com. It is THE place to get ready for the PMP Exam.

Know what Enterprise Environmental Factors are? Get a quick refresher course at Enterprises Environmental Factors.

Don’t crash and burn on the PMP exam. Get prepared with the PMP Exam Simulation Software. 6000 unique PMP questions for less than most PMP exam prep texts.

Know those difficult PMI-isms when you sit for the PMP exam, by learning these Project Management Terms

Share this: