Implementation Strategies|Computer Science
Project communication is very critical to the success of any project. It is also critical to key project management soft-skill. As a project manager, project communication is one deliverable that they are personally responsible for and it was of the largest influence over the failure or project success. There are main elements of project communications examples are project sponsors, customers, project team members, project manager, and project management office.
Project communication plan
The major objectives of a communication plan are; to encourage the use of project management best practices, ensure a consistent, give accurate and timely information about the project, and to promote and gain support for the project management improvements.
Table 1 below shows the target audience
Project stakeholders
Message
Delivery method
Delivery Frequency
Communicator
Project Sponsor
Project plans and status report
Meeting
Report sent via mail to project sponsor
Weekly
Project manager
Project core team
Project plans
Meeting
Weekly
Project manager
Executive management
Project briefing
Oral briefing and presentation of slides
Monthly
Biweekly
Project manager
Programmers
Project briefing
Oral briefing
Daily
Project manager
Users
Project status
Meeting and presentation slides
Weekly
Project manager
Communication message contents
A project plan shoes a guide of project execution and project control. Then document also shows approved scope of the project, the cost, and schedule. Project plans shows the current and future plans. The documents also shows project problems and issues. Project plan also shows planned project deliverables for the next period. The status report, keeps the key project stakeholders informed. It is shows status summary, status budget, status scope, accomplishment, issues, and project team members. Project briefing shows project issues and problems, it also shows goals of project management improvement, and project checklist (Project Management Institute, 2017).
Documentation Required
There are eight essential documents required for this project. First is a project charter. This document formally recognizes the project creation and the formal contract between project sponsors, project stakeholders, and commercial agreement. Project charter documents gathers aspects related to the contracting and the contacted example is the project name, the goals of the project and the needs that the project it serves. Project charter also shows a brief description of the project, feasibility study, the project products i.e. training manuals, supporting, and monitoring post release of the project. A project charter also shows the intermediate products which are delivered at each and every stage which must be at the end of each stage. A project charter also shows project sponsors, the project manager responsible and the project users. A project charter also shows the resources that are required that is preliminary budget which has to show values scaled by steps. A project charter also shows restrictions on the use of information, the procedures that are required in each change of scope and the procedures that are required for approval of the project.
The second document required is the project management plan. A project management plan is a document that defines how a project is executed and monitored. It also shows how a project is controlled. The documents also shows subsidiary plans. There are six elements that must be included in a project management plan which is baselines for scope, schedule, and cost. A project management plan has to the elements of requirement management plan, change management plan, process improvement plan, and configuration management plan (Snyder, 2010).
Project scope plan is another document that documents project objectives and project scope. A project scope plan also facilitates a dealing with the changes that arise when undertaking the project. A scope is a briefing that shows all the project objectives that are needed to be achieved. A project schedule plan is a set of project phases with prominent tasks. The document also shows the start and expiration which dates of the contract. This documentation is what most of project stakeholders would wish to see every time there are called for a weekly meeting. A project team plan is a document which keeps track of activities, resources, project costs, work packages, and the project critical path. A project work plan also shows project milestones. This is a very essential document as it shows work guideline for the core project team (Sisco, 2001).
Quality assurance plan is another essential document which tracks the quality standards for project deliverables. Additionally, quality assurance plan also shows tools and quality policies, quality metrics, acceptance criteria, and product defect severity grades. The project risks plan is a document contains a risk assessment matrix. This document is prepared by a project manager. Project risk plan must also include risk strategy. There are four potential strategies that must be included in a project risk plan which are avoid risk, mitigate risk, accept risk and transfer risk. Avoiding risk shows change plans to circumvent problem. Mitigating risk reduces impact or the likelihood through intermediate steps. Acceptance risk take the chance of negative impact an eventually budget the cost. Transferring risk is a portion where the project team transfers a risk to a third party. In overall project risk plan shows possible solutions to risks. It is very important to keep all this eight documents updated as they all required by project stakeholders (Kerzner, 2017).
Change Control Process
A properly change control process has seven processes must be employed on the project to properly manage any disruption of the project. The first one is to identify what aspect is to be improved. This can involve identifying a resource, an objective, and project members. Second is presenting a solid case to the project stakeholders. Third is planning for change. Forth is to provide resources and use data for evaluation. Fifth is communication which identifies planning, onboarding and executing good change. Lastly is reviewing, revising and continuously improving the change initiated.
Tasks to be Out-Sourced using Consulting Services
One of the tasks to be carried out by consulting services are; first is performing an external risk assessment for the project. External risk assessors tests the underlying transactions which form the basis of the business function. Internal risk assessors advise the management on the major operations of the project. This means external risk assessors has the ability to recommend on mitigation activities in case a certain risk assessors. For internal risks assessors the cost is lower than for external risk assessors’ doe to the extensive audit experiences. Additionally risk assessors can participate in the remediation effort. One of the challenge with external risk assessors is that it is not built on the cost structure to conduction the risk assessment. Additionally, if it is included when undertaking the project it can cause the budget to creep (Stackpole, 2013).
References
Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management. Place of publication not identified: John Wiley & Sons.
Project Management Institute. (2017). A guide to the project management body of knowledge: (PMBOK® guide). Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, USA: Project Management Institute.
Snyder, C. (2010). A user’s guide to the PMBOK guide. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.
Sisco, M. (2001). IT project management. Columbia, Tenn.: MDE Enterprises.
Stackpole, S. C. (2013). A User’s Manual to the PMBOK Guide. Hoboken: Wiley.
