I have tried to put in a small presentation to highlight the importance of communication giving success to effective project management thereby enable all stakeholders informed on RAID to critical path activities to scope creep. As I was involved in many IT and other PM activities I felt lack of clear communication is causing many projects/programs going into code-red. Your views are always welcome. All views are my personal ones

1. Success from Project
Management
Communication is Key
By Shankar N Mandapaka

2. Index
 Introduction
 Project Management
 PM – Key Ingredients
 Communication
 Types of Communication
 Communication failures
 Communication – Rectification
 Collaboration is nothing but Communication

3. Introduction
Success of any project whether it’s big or small is measured from outcomes.
Over a period of time process centric approach gave a way to project centric
approach.
Process centric approach delegated work through-out the life-cycle of the process
thus outcome from one work-center moved into another work-center. Quality Control
persisted and later gave way to Quality Assurance. Success measured is Individual
centric.
As project centric approach made collaboration among various resources to
concentrate on the set goals and defined project outcomes. Success measured as a
group.
In all whether its’s process centric or project centric approach communication is key
to make things clear among all stakeholders from time-to-time thus making way for
earlier prognosis and diagnosis of an identified problem.

4. Project Management
 Project Management is synonymous with
various construction activities or even wars
originated long-time back.
 Project Management was earlier revolved
around CPM and PERT.
 Later one witnessed various in-built models in
grouping individual tasks and identifying Key
Deliverable Milestones.
 Even project costing is in-built into the
system making us visualize how project over-
runs impacts the planned budgets.
 For any thing to succeed people, process and
technology is key and Project Management is
not an exception too.
 Nowadays there are established processes and
practices across domains to ensure all critical
outcomes once identified can be easily
monitored, controlled and implemented.
Project
Management
Tasks
Collaboration
Schedule
Costing
Review and
Reporting
People

5. PM – Key Ingredients
 Signed contract – again a piece of communication document
 SoW – again a piece of communication document describing scope of work for the
project on-hand
 Team & establishing roles and responsibilities – again a piece of document on
shared roles and individual team member roles in the project team
 Plan and Schedule – who does what, when, how and where again a piece of
communication
 Execution – communicating with computers to develop the code and software
product, EPC activities
 Reviews – again a forum to understand the risk, issues and progress – a
communication channel
 Reporting – again a communication channel to convey progress, risk, issues etc..
 Project Closure – a piece of communication to various stakeholders

6. Communication
What is communication?
Way to express the need, feelings and desires in some form
Why is it so important?
Without expression no one understands so it becomes hidden agenda and will die
down over a period of time.
How does it create a success or failure?
A properly articulated expression using any communication medium shall result into
planned outcomes whereas half-cooked or baked expression creates chaos resulting
into confusion and failure of the expressed message or content
Communication levels and types –
Levels include Public, Private, Official, Government and Personal and types include
SMS, e-mail, alerts, hoarding, voice calls, resume, posters, post cards, letters, sign-
post etc..

7. Types of Communication – from PM
perspective
Types of communications as listed in previous slide can even be categorized
broadly as
Verbal – daily stand-up, f2f reviews etc..
Non-Verbal – daily, weekly, monthly dashboard reporting
Visual – Product demo’s, Power point presentation, video chats etc..
Written – e-mail’s, check-list, SoP’s, other contractually signed documents etc.
Electronic – Conference calls, SMS,

8. Communication – Failures from PM perspective
 Project and Programs does have a plan and schedule
consuming various resources spread across people,
process and technology and budgets.
 Prioritization is key to executing the tasks and /or
planned activities logically grouped to get required
outcome.
 Project Monitoring and control in the form of reviews,
team meetings, stakeholders meeting is the common norm
to assess risk and issues and thereby anticipated failures
or those failures happened can be pulled back to
normalcy.
What are common communication failures?
1) No clear updates
2) Hiding data and information at times in reporting
3) Within software not handling exceptions properly
4) Lack of governance thereby missing some of the key
stakeholders
5) Not alerting on Critical Path Activities..
6) No proactive approach
7) No pre-define agenda even for 5 minute stand-up call.
8) Use of mobile phones during conference calls
9) People working on some other topics (using mobile,
laptops and other gadgets) while attending review
meetings
10) Not muting the microphone while participating in
conference calls from desktop/home at times
11) Matrix reporting data not linked enough
12) Not-Ensuring MoM is circulated post meetings
13) Not-Ensuring follow-up on pending issues is addressed
during review meetings
14) Missing what to follow to ensure EHS is followed in
compliance with local as well as global standards.

9. Communication Rectification
 Commitment is the main aspect to ensure proper communication flows from inside out and vice versa.
 Accepting fault and apologizing is the first step to any kind communication failure
 E-mail goof-up – Apologize first then send updated e-mail
 Add all contact details in the signature section of the e-mail body
 Instead of just listening and nodding the head during team meetings raise any alarms immediately and get
clarity on the issue points
 Do not forward internal e-mail chain communication to external customer
 Always respond to Customer (internal or external) ASAP
 Conduct code reviews/design reviews with all key stakeholders
 Invite unbiased customer feedback using online surveys and using focused project/program specific
templates
 Publish an escalation matrix and service catalogue to resolve any customer related issues
 Publish key team details to all project stakeholders..record changes and publish amended as and when
needed.
 Get Customer acceptance on the reporting templates freezed for reporting
 While publishing daily, weekly and monthly reports review the data and info to be published and ensure
correctness, consistency and accuracy is maintained during the entire life-cycle

10. Collaboration is nothing but Communication
 Success comes only when there is a collaboration between people. Be it in
home, school, office and/or society.
 Due to nature of team building, team work defining clear-cut roles and
responsibilities is key to ensure all activities or tasks will be completed as per
the plan.
 Reviews have to be planned
 Keep the reviews to the schedule time slots with minimum disruption.
 Involve supporting staff also in team meetings (once in a week) to get
accountability, responsibility and ownership of their work.
 Engage customer on daily basis to ensure project do not absorb scope creep.
 Always publish any changes using CCB and using authenticated channels.