The Project Management Corner

The communication plan is an important part of the overall project plan. It defines how the communication will occur during the project execution with everyone who has a stake in the project. Effective and efficient communication is key to a successful project. It can help to identify risks and issues, avoid duplication of work and build relationships. A good communication plan will always have the following elements.

• Communication objectives
• Target audience
• Purpose of communication for each audience
• Content / artifacts for the communication
• Information sources for the content
• Communication method
• Communication frequency
• Responsible communicator

By putting all of these elements together you can build a comprehensive plan. One last key component that project managers have to include in their communication plan is

• Measurement of success

How will you know that the plan is working? You need a way to measure the effectiveness of the communication. If the plan is not working and you are not meeting the communication objectives, it has to be re-designed to be more effective.

Last month I opened a discussion on Project Management Central to find out what kind of tools and techniques project managers use to measure the effectiveness of communication plans. Based on the feedback, I compiled the following list of tools that can be used to evaluate the communication plan.

1. Meeting evaluation form: A survey that can be filled by the participants at the the end of the meeting. Keep in mind that this should be short enough for the participants to fill in quickly. This can also be done via e-mail immediately after the meeting. Here is simple template for a meeting evaluation form.

2. Verbal feedback: This is a good techniques for small audiences. Request for feedback at the end of the meeting and take notes. This feedback can be used to make the next meeting more productive.

3. Engagement profiles: In the article "Beyond Reporting--The Communication Strategy" Lynda Bourne describes the use of engagement profiles to measure the effectiveness of the communication plan. This technique involves assessing the gap between the current and target attitude of each stakeholder. Read the article for more details. This is a good technique that can be used for key stakeholders.

4. Open forums: Forums such as retrospective meetings are a good medium to get feedback about the overall communication plan from your team. Find out what went well and what didn't in terms of the communication and adjust the plan for the next sprint, iteration or phase.

I believe a mix of these techniques can be used to measure the effectiveness of the communication plan based on the audience and the type of communication. Do you have tools in place to measure your communication plan? What techniques do you use? Please share your thoughts in the comments.