Project Management: Foundations to Practice · Communication Management
The Communication Plan
Different stakeholders need genuinely different information at genuinely different levels of detail. This chapter covers why one-size-fits-all reporting reliably fails both audiences.
A communication management plan documents who needs what information, how often, through what channel, and in what format throughout a project's life [1]. Building this plan deliberately, rather than communicating reactively as questions arise, ensures that stakeholders receive information proactively rather than only in response to them asking, which tends to happen later than would have been ideal.
Key Takeaways
- A communication plan documents who needs what information, how often, through what channel, and in what format.
- It builds directly on the stakeholder engagement plan, since different stakeholders warrant different communication content and frequency.
- A single reporting format for every audience tends to under-serve both executives (too much detail) and team members (too little).
- Mature communication plans deliberately produce multiple, differently formatted outputs from the same underlying project data.