Marginalia

• Enterprise Environmental Factors in this context refer to the culture of communication into the project owning company or organization is embedded (comp. PMBOK3, p. 225 and 83).

• And the Organizational Process Assets in this context refer to the specific guidelines of the organization which owns the project (comp. PMBOK3, p. 225 and 84)

(7.1) Communications Planning

(7.1.1) Process Input

... generated by predecessor processes

... introduced by external units

  • Enterprise Environmental Factors
  • Organizational Process Assets

(7.1.2) Process Definition

Communications Planning is the process for "[...] determining the information and communications needs of the project stakeholder"  (comp. PMBOK3, p. 221):

"Identifying the informational needs of the stakeholders and determining suitable means of meeting those needs is an important factor for project success."

(comp. PMBOK3, p. 225)

The subject Communications Management operates on the base of other communications concerning concepts

(7.1.3) Tools and Techniques

PMBOK Mentioned Methods

  • Communication requirements analysis is a method to find out who wants to know what and when for turning towards to the project targets positively. If someone wants to get an information that must be delivered by another one has to establish a communication channel: "The total number of communication channels is n*(n-1)/2, where n = number of stakeholders" (comp. PMBOK3, p. 226).
  • Communications technology is the set of methodologies "[...] used to transfer information among project stakeholders" and "[...] can vary significantly". Therefore one has to select the method with respect to other requirements (comp. PMBOK3, p. 227):
    • "the urgency of the need for information"
    • "the availability of thechnology"
    • "the expected project staffing"
    • "the length of the project"
    • "the project environment"

Open Source Tools

  • NN

(7.1.4) Process Output

  • The Communications Management Plan "[...] defines the communication needs of the Stakeholders, the communications format and frequency, and who delivers them":  On the one hand it is an instrument for controlling the communication, which itself "[...] is a key to project management": one can say that "90% of a project manager's job" concerns or "[...] is communication" (comp. CROSSWIND7, p. 392). And on the other hand the communication management plan fixes the "performance measurement baseline" and is of course part of the Project Management Plan (comp. CROSSWIND7, p.395): It is a document which describes ...
    • the "stakeholder communication requirements"
    • which information has to be communicated how (format, level of detail, content, communication item and purpose)
    • who has to communicate what information to whom (responsibility)
    • how often the information is conveyed (frequence of the communications)
    • ways of escalations
    • methods for updating the communications management plan
    • guidelines for project status, project team meetings, e-meetings, and e-mail

(comp. PMBOK3, p. 227)

(7.1.5) Output Using Successor Processes

Successors using the initially generated output as own input(1):

  1. For details see FAQ::Q001:1