Project Launch Process L060

L060 - Set up / Revise and Agree Communications Plan

DEFINITION 

An initial approach should be agreed for the project to communicate necessary messages to the overall organisation.  Publicity and education are essential elements in a successful project.

SUMMARY

To ensure sufficient and clear communication will take place between the project team and all relevant participants, the communication needs may be analysed and a project Communications Plan constructed.

Typical steps they will need to consider while planning are:

• identifying the scope of the plan and the planning approach
• agree the communication principles
• identify and mobilise appropriate “planners”
• analyse demand and supply
• consider techniques available
• plan activities / assign responsibilities
• communicate the Communications Plan
• follow-up and review the Communications Plan.

PATH PLANNING GUIDANCE

This process is optional.  It is good practice where the success of the project requires the dissemination of information or the promotion of changed attitudes amongst a large number of staff.

DEPENDENCIES

Prerequisites (Finish-Finish):

• Review / confirm Terms of Reference (ToR), Scope, Objectives (L010)
• Review / confirm business needs and anticipated benefits (L020)
• Produce path plan (L090)
• Detail the segment plan (L120)
• Define and agree change management approach (L050)
• Define organisation, people, support requirements (L100)
• Set-up/review user involvement (L170)
• Detail/revise staffing/team structure/organisation (L130)

Dependent procedures (Finish-Finish):

• Organisational impact (R090)
• Implement Communications (D090)
• Agree reviewers and sign-off authority/responsibility (D200)
• Identify human and organisational issues (D730)
• Plan and activate human resources and organisational changes (D740)
• Plan, prepare and conduct users and management training (D760)
• Plan prepare and conduct operations training (D770)
• Plan, prepare and conduct support training (D780)
• User testing (D800)
• Define, plan and agree hand-over, cutover (D830)
• Define and agree TOR for live user support activity (D850)
• Define live support mechanisms (D860)
• Plan and instigate phased transition to live operation and support, and phasing out of project team support (D870)

RECEIVABLES

• Project Constitution - Terms of Reference / Scope / Objectives etc
• Definition of business needs and anticipated benefits
• Project organigramme
• Path Plan
• Segment Plan

DELIVERABLES

• Communications Approach Implementation Paper
• Communications Plan

TOOLS

• (none)

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF TASKS

Communication Approach

In simple projects it is often possible to determine a Communications Plan by discussing the issues with the project sponsor and any other key personnel within the client organisation.  A plan would be stated and agreed.

In more complex projects it may be necessary to investigate and analyse the underlying needs, issues, options and recommended approach.  This may be done in the format of an Implementation Paper covering the “Communications Approach”.  This paper will often include a number of sensitive personnel issues and may not be suitable for general publication (certain types of discussion may be unsuitable for noting in writing even in restricted circulation).  The resulting Communications Plan should, however, be generally made known to all interested parties.

The communications approach implementation paper is likely to investigate the:

• needs and objectives for communications,
• issues,
• options available
• recommended approach.

Unlike a standard implementation paper, the full detail would not normally be placed in the paper but would be documented and published in the Communications Plan.

Many of the main needs and issues may have already been considered in other processes such as “define and agree change management approach” (L050), “define organisation, people, support requirements” (L100), “set-up/review user involvement” (L170), “detail/revise staffing/team structure/organisation” (L130).

Further needs and issues may relate to:

• the nature of the organisation, such as its geographical and departmental organisation,
• the culture of the organisation, eg management and staff attitudes,
• the extent to which staff need to buy-in to the new systems and processes,
• which departments or people feel they “own” which aspects of the project and resulting systems and processes.

A key aspect to the approach will be to identify key roles, for example,

• who is responsible for  maintaining communication with whom,
• who “owns” (i.e.  officially publishes) the newsletter,
• whether it is the project director, or whether it is a user manager who is in charge of working with the business to implement all the changes.

It will be at this stage that personnel issues should be considered and some initial actions defined.  For example, it is wise to consider the attitude of any unions or staff associations and whether any specific actions would be appropriate to encourage the right levels of consultation and acceptance of the new system.

In looking at the options, a range of approaches, tools and techniques may be considered.  It is useful to investigate what media are already available within the organisation and to use these methods effectively.  New or alternative techniques should only be used where there is no suitable existing vehicle for the right level of communication, or where the arrival of something new would add substantially to the impact of the message.  (Some specific techniques are noted later in this process.)

In general, the needs, issues and options considered in the following sections would be documented in the implementation paper, whereas the detailed approach would be published as the Communications Plan.

Purpose of the Communications Plan

The purpose of the Communications Plan is to enable the business users, operational users and project team members to understand fully how communication relating to the project should be addressed, by identifying which communication actions will take place and who will be responsible for them.

For smaller projects the need for a regular and formalised process to plan the communication activity can be relatively small.  Very often, communication needs can be easily defined and will intuitively be planned as part of the normal planning activities.  However, in a number of cases a more structured approach is warranted:

• projects with a long duration:
• regular communication to users and others will be required
• projects with a large project team:
• communication within the project team and between the business and project team will benefit from co-ordination, thus clarifying communication roles and building on synergy
• projects with large numbers of users (potentially with different communication needs and in different locations):
• communicating with the users will be more difficult to organise and will need tailoring to specific needs
• projects involving major change:
• early communication/education activities will promote the building of sufficient sponsorship and user commitment to the new system
• projects in changing organisations:
• finding the right person to communicate with is hard when organisations are in the process of restructuring; a formalised communications planning exercise will help identify the key players.

Key questions answered by the Communications Plan

To reflect the communication activities needed effectively, the Communications Plan will need to answer the following questions:

• what are the communication needs of:
• the project team
• between subteams
• outside the project team
• of the business
• between parts of the business
• with the project team
• of “outsiders”, e.g. suppliers, customers, regulators, etc
• how will that need be met?
• who will communicate and to whom?
• when will communication take place (and how frequently)?
• what will be communicated?
• what media / mechanisms / roles will be used?
• what feedback mechanisms will be put in place?

Building the Communications Plan

The following tasks may be required in defining the Communications Plan.

Identifying the scope of the plan and the planning approach

An effective Communications Plan may cover:

• how activities within the project will exchange information, i.e. how subteams and individuals plan to communicate,
• how the project team will update the business, i.e. how project members and other people in the organisation will communicate; this will cover communications at management level, and also day-to-day communication,
• how the business will update the project on changes to the user organisation and organisational needs,
• how parts of the business will communicate with one another to prepare for the system and/or provide coherent answers to question for the project team,
• how the organisation will communicate with “outsiders” who have a need to know or who they need information from.

Although all these aspects need to be covered by the Communications Plan, it is not always possible to analyse and plan for all these things in one exercise.  Also, it is not necessarily the responsibility of the same people.  For instance, how the project team communicates internally is likely to be the responsibility of the project manager, whereas the communication within the business is more likely to be the responsibility of the project sponsor(s).  They will, however, share responsibility for the communication between project team and business, hence the need for a defined approach to the planning exercise defining a common format for the plan and allocating responsibilities to individuals/groups to define their part of the overall plan.  These people will be the “owners” of the Communications Plan and can be given sign-off authority.

Agree communication principles

In order to ensure cohesion between the different parts of the Communications Plan, a number of principles will need to be agreed with the “owners” of the plan. Typical elements may include:

• format of the plan,
• use of available communication mechanisms (e.g. company magazine),
• use of existing management structures or the creation of specific project communication roles/networks (see Process D740),
• timing of user involvement, education and training depending on the chosen change management approach (see Process L050),
• allocation of global communication responsibilities between project team and business (e.g. does the project team or the business ensure regular newsletters?).

Identify and mobilise appropriate planners

As mentioned above, different people will need to own different parts of the Communications Plan.  In addition, these owners will need to involve others as appropriate.  For instance, the project manager will typically involve the leaders of the subteams.  For smaller projects it can even be more useful to involve all project team members.

As the project team structure is usually well defined, identifying the right project members to be involved in communications planning is normally straightforward. Involving the right users and user managers is usually not as straightforward. Typical groups/individuals who can make useful contributions are:

• communication specialists,
• Public Relations (P.R.) departments,
• selected people from all user departments, covering all functional groups and all layers of the organisation,
• training department representatives,
• IT department representatives,
• policy and procedure makers.

Analyse demand and supply

This is the most complicated part of the Communications Planning exercise.  It basically brings together all the information on the communication needs of every relevant group/individual (= demand) and matches this with the project and business deliverables as they are currently planned (= supply).

If, for instance, the training department needs to know how many rooms are needed 6 months before training takes place in order to book sufficient space, then the training volumes and duration will need to be decided 6 months before training starts.  If however current plans only aim to deliver volumes and duration 3 months before training starts, there is a mismatch between supply and demand.  Either the project activities determining duration and volumes will need to be brought forward or the start of training needs to be postponed.

By comparing project plan, business plan(s) and communication needs , the communications planners will identify:

• missing communication activities: i.e. there is a need but no activity to meet it,
• timing mismatches: i.e. there is an activity to meet the need, but it takes place too late (too early is usually less of an issue),
• duplications: several activities are planned to meet the same communication need,
• unnecessary communication: i.e. a planned communication activity without a matching communication need.

Consider techniques available

There is a range of options available for communicating, some straightforward, some exotic.  These may be considered as tools for communicating messages.  Some examples might be:

• circulars / circulated memos,
• articles in internal newspapers,
• PR tools, eg  calendars, posters, gimmicks, badged gifts - eg mouse mat with system instructions / help / contact information,
• questionnaires,
• sampled one-to-one meetings,
• workshops,
• presentations,
• conferences,
• video conferencing,
• electronic mail circulars,
• regular briefing packs  (on paper or by electronic mail),
• electronic bulletin boards,
• planned “informal” telephone calls to key interested people,
• regular (eg agreed every months or every fortnight) phone rounds to networks of people
• video film briefings and education sessions,
• log on messages for existing users,
• printed messages on output from current system,
• demonstrations of the new systems,
• hands-on sessions / model office.

Plan activities and assign responsibilities

On the basis of the demand/supply analysis, decisions will need to be taken as to:

• the roles individuals/groups will play in the communication throughout the project life:
• e.g. user managers may be given the responsibility of updating their people at least monthly on project progress, decisions they need to be aware of and involving them as appropriate in information gathering and decision making for the project; to this end the project manager might e‑mail a monthly briefing pack to user managers, which they would then customise and distribute as appropriate.
• the actions that each of the people involved in communication will be responsible for, the deadlines they need to meet and the estimated effort involved.
• e.g. user managers may be asked to organise introductory briefing sessions to have taken place before the training starts.

The communications tasks may be put into effect in Process D090 - Implement Communications, or as part of other project activities.

Communicate the Communication Plan

Once the roles are clarified and the activities are planned, it is essential to ensure that the plan itself is properly communicated.  In the first place, all people who will play a role in the communication process will need to understand their role (ideally they will have been involved in the previous stages of the planning process).  Also, all project team members will need to understand how communication is planned so that they can build on the agreed mechanisms and actions as appropriate.  Lastly, the people on the receiving end of the communications could be interested in having an overview of the Communications Plan.  When and how to communicate this is an exercise in its own right and needs to correspond to a recognised “need to know” by the people the message is targeted at.

Follow-up and review the Communications Plan

For projects longer than 6 months, regular reviews and refinements of the Communications Plan may be needed.  Since the communication is influenced by the project plan, linking the project plan review and the Communications Plan review seems a sensible approach.  Alternatively, the Communications Plan could be linked to typical review points used by the user community, e.g. quarterly reviews, annual reviews.

In addition, the Communications Plan owner will need to follow up whether planned activities are happening as projected.  A distinction between critical and non-critical activities will help in this monitoring process.  Critical activities are those activities which deliver a key input to the next activity without which the latter cannot start or continue.  This output is typically a tangible deliverable, e.g. a list of requirements, program specification, etc.  When considering critical Communications Plan activities, a number of activities might not focus on a tangible deliverable, but on less tangible outputs such as “understanding”, “commitment”, etc.  Although intangible and difficult to measure, these outputs are by no means second rank and need to be safeguarded.  To avoid priority conflicts the Communications Plan owner will benefit from understanding and agreeing the interdependence and criticality of the planned activities.