Communication in Projects – Theory and Practice

Maciej Kaniewski, Krystyna Burzyńska-Kaniewska, Jerzy Stawicki,

1. Significance of communications

Modern project management standards such as the PMBOK (A Guide to the Project
Management Body of Knowledge) increasingly emphasize the intricacy of human interactions
in projects. An efficient project manager needs to identify, understand and manage those
interactions. After all, although many projects are carried out by qualified knowledge workers
who have the required subject matter expertise, team members nevertheless need to
understand the project’s goals and identify with them. They must know precisely what is
expected of them to help attain these goals, both individually and as a team. This is where
efficient communication comes into play, with the project manager playing the role of a
skilled communications manager. The same applies to understanding and balancing
stakeholder expectations, another area where communications management is a crucial project
management technique. It can be argued that good communication is actually a major critical
success factor in projects, since:

• projects require cooperation and knowledge sharing between people who need not
know each other closely and may come from different cultural environments,
• projects require detailed planning involving various stakeholders, who need to trust
and understand each other,
• projects require complex decision making cutting across the usual command lines,
• being unique and therefore subject to risk, projects require effective risk management,
which means effective communication especially during a crisis,
• proper and timely communication ensures correct assessment of the project status,
allowing adequate decision-making.

In order to manage project communications effectively, the project manager ought to keep the
different purposes, goals and constraints of project communications in mind and then use
appropriate techniques, some of which are described later in this article. Caution is required:

• Project managers should beware of assuming the role of the ultimate authority on all
project issues, a trap which is frequently fallen in to by project managers who double up
as team members.
• Anxious to communicate properly, novice project managers sometimes fall into the trap of
over-communicating, e.g. holding redundant meetings or sending e-mails which are either
irrelevant or badly addressed. This can impair the project as much as missing
communication.
• The project manager should also keep in mind that he or she is not a “phone exchange” or
“mail exchange” for all project communications, some of which can be handled perfectly
well within the project team! An excessive need for control can have disastrous impact on
the quality of project communications.

 2008 Maciej Kaniewski, Krystyna Burzyńska-Kaniewska, Jerzy Stawicki. All rights reserved 1/9
In general, it helps to follow Rule of Thumb No. 1:

From the project manager’s perspective the information to be communicated should

either contribute to the project’s success, or else the lack of it should contribute to the
project’s failure.

2. Communication purposes

Communication means passing messages between originators and recipients. However, it is a

more complex process than simply sharing information. At least five different purposes of
project communications can be distinguished:

1. The first and most obvious role is exchanging information about the project. At the top
level, this is directed towards achieving a common understanding of the project, involving
the project’s objectives and deliverables, the project context (such as assumptions and
constraints), and – last not least – the project’s subject matter. At a lower level, this will
include the communication of such items as work package outcomes, open issues and
risk-related information.
2. Another purpose, closely related to the first, is the communication of project decisions.
These include strategic decisions, such as go/no-go and other milestone decisions, as well
as work package decisions and tasks assignments. The difference is that, whilst in the first
case the emphasis was on having everyone informed, in the second case even within a
highly consensual culture, somebody (e.g. the sponsor, the steering committee or the
project manager) makes a decision and requires others (e.g. project team member) to
conform.
3. The first two purposes of communications may also have an additional purpose of gaining
acceptance for oneself or one’s ideas. This is especially visible during kickoff meetings
where all of the three mentioned purposes interact, i.e. informing team members about the
project, communicating strategic project decisions, such as the project goals and scope
definition, as well as achieving project buy-in from the team.
4. Communicating opinions is another important purpose of communications. This refers to
the project manager’s task of providing feedback to project team members regarding their
work, also including approval or disapproval, and of receiving feedback from project team
members and stakeholders.
5. Finally, there is a whole range of soft communications aimed at creating a climate of
mutual trust, respect and understanding, which is a prerequisite for teambuilding.
Although managers, including project managers, often initiate separate activities for this
purpose, such as integration meetings, soft communications can be a natural part of
communication processes serving the first four purposes as well. Of course, this does not
mean that the project manager should aspire to be a therapist or father confessor.

3. The project manager’s role

Having outlined the purposes of project communications, let us now examine the project
manager’s role in the communication process. Actually, depending on the purpose of the
communications activity, this can be split into four different roles as follows:

 2008 Maciej Kaniewski, Krystyna Burzyńska-Kaniewska, Jerzy Stawicki. All rights reserved 2/9
1. Facilitator - someone who enables and supports good communication practices within the
project team and with project stakeholders, and makes it easier for others to communicate
efficiently within the project. A good facilitator sees to it that people have the right
communications media at their disposal, arranges and moderates meetings so that they run
smoothly, on time, to the point and with the right participants, makes sure that everybody
gets the chance to share information with others and that all those involved receive the
information which is relevant to them, identifies and solves communications issues and so
on. This can be also grouped as “communications management”. Within this role, the
project manager should identify communication requirements and solve problems
impairing good communications in the project.
2. Communicator – someone who “produces” and distributes information. The project
manager is the source of information for the project team about outside factors which
influence the project. He is also a source of information for both the project team and
project stakeholders about the overall project status as related to the project plan. In
addition, the project manager can also be the source of information about project decisions,
assignments, open issues and risks. This actually involves two sub-roles:
• information originator in cases when the project manager is the first source of
information, such as the analysis of the project status
• information integrator in other cases, where the project manager “processes”,
standardizes and integrates information produced by others, such as identified risks
and open issues
If the project manager does not fulfill this role professionally, he or she can become a
significant project bottleneck.
3. Recipient – in this case the project manager, simply speaking, listens to others. This
means that he must not only be accessible to information sources, but also able to
recognize whether the information is relevant and request clarifications if the information
is fuzzy or unclear. The delicate balance here is between getting flooded by information
on the one extreme and discouraging information (for instance, by avoiding feedback) on
the other extreme. On the whole, since the project manager cannot manage without
information, in this case over-communication is preferable to under-communication.
4. Stakeholder requirements manager – this a complex role which is targeted at
understanding and balancing stakeholder needs, and to some extent involves the above
three roles mentioned above. The project manager ought to identify and classify important
project stakeholders and select the appropriate communication strategy based on their
degree of interest in the project on the one side and their power to effect changes in the
project on the other side. This also entails identifying the key stakeholders’ information
preferences and requirements.

4. Planning communications

It can be seen that the project manager’s function in the communications process is essential.
Indeed, some sources state that communication-related activities consume more than 70% of
the PM’s time. As is the case in all project management activities, communications requires
proper planning which will answer the following questions:

• What forms of communication, media, tools and techniques should the project manager
use?
• What should be the format and content of the information communicated?
• Who should communicate what with whom on a regular basis, including escalation paths?

 2008 Maciej Kaniewski, Krystyna Burzyńska-Kaniewska, Jerzy Stawicki. All rights reserved 3/9
• Who should communicate what with whom on an exceptional basis?

Before going into detail, it might be useful to quote Rule of Thumb No. 2 which applies to
most projects:

The originator should ensure that the information reaches the recipient and is
understood.

If the project manager applies this approach to his or her own activities using both technical
means (e.g. as e-mail delivery notifications) and some simple procedures (e.g. asking control
questions), success will be around the corner. On the other hand, although this approach
should also be encouraged among team members with respect to the communication they
originate, enforcement may be difficult. This means that the project manager should, on the
one hand, take advantage of his role as a communications facilitator, but also be an active
listener as the message recipient, providing feedback to the message originator. In other
words, the project manager should see it as his responsibility to elicit useful information and
make sure he or she understands it.

It has been said provocatively that managing projects would actually be an easy task, were it
not for the project context. Although certainly exaggerated, this statement also applies to
communications. Let us consider the following factors:

1. The cultural background of the project stakeholders and team members may differ
considerably. From the communications perspective, the project manager should resolve
issues such as:
• What communication forms are sufficiently polite to be accepted by the recipients? Is
it proper, for instance, to criticize somebody’s performance overtly? Is it acceptable to
discuss matters with superiors in the presence of their subordinates? How should
assignments be handed out?
• What is the meaning of particular messages, both verbal and non-verbal? Does
“maybe” mean “maybe” or does it mean “no”? Does nodding mean understanding,
approval or attention? Does appraisal reflect somebody’s real opinion or is it just a
polite formula?
• What emotions can be displayed? Is smiling considered encouraging, provocative or
silly? Can jokes be made?
• Are there cultural rules related to genders or age?
It is true that, during the age of globalization, a certain alignment of communicational
standards can be observed, especially within multinational corporations. However, the
project manager should be certain that he or she correctly handles both information forms
and content. Some upfront analysis may be useful, such as the distinction between “high-
context” and “low-context” cultural frameworks, as described in the works of Edward T.
Hall.
2. Although organizational culture and standards may limit the impact of the above issues,
they can nevertheless introduce other limitations. Project communications usually should
not force people to adopt a standard which is completely different from what they are used
to in their everyday work. For instance, all-written communication may be desirable from
a project perspective for some reason, but may be impossible to impose in a team-working
environment based on verbal interactions. Communication across command lines may be
theoretically efficient, but impractical within a stiffly hierarchical structure.

 2008 Maciej Kaniewski, Krystyna Burzyńska-Kaniewska, Jerzy Stawicki. All rights reserved 4/9
3. The technical infrastructure and available IT tools influence the practicality of
communication patterns. This is closely related to the physical and geographical
environment in which the project takes place. Typical questions could include the
following:
• If team members are supposed to work from home, do they have e-mail access?
• Do team members have company mobile phones to call the project manager? Will this
work between two countries?
• How and where should meetings be organized if the project is geographically
dispersed?
4. In parallel with the organizational model, the project manager should consider the actual
people involved:
• Do they have sufficient qualifications to use the communication tools they have
received?
• Is their level of education and training sufficient to communicate what the project
manager would like to know?
• Do they have sufficient language skills?
• Do they have any disabilities which could impair their communication potential?
5. Last but not least, the overall management model may influence the way in which project
decisions are communicated. Although the project manager may have all the required
communication skills, important project decisions may need to be communicated by an
upper management level to gain acceptance.

Now that possible communication barriers have been – hopefully – identified, the project
manager should plan the communication process. Here, it is important to keep in mind Rule of
Thumb No. 3:

Project communications change in time, which should be reflected in the selection of

adequate communication media and techniques.

The initiation and planning stage of the project, involving discussions, brainstorming,
workshops and similar events, usually focuses on peer-to-peer communication within the
entire project team and with the involvement of major stakeholders. The project manager
concentrates on his or her role as a moderator and facilitator of the communications process,
and strives to achieve joint understanding of the project so as to complete the planning
process to the stakeholders’ satisfaction. Here, the emphasis is more on completeness, less on
timeliness. The reverse holds true for the execution stage, where timeliness of information is
of paramount importance for taking the right project decisions. Consequently, a project
manager may have an excellent skill set for managing the initiation or planning stage, but
inadequate skills for managing the execution stage.

Planning of the project communications process essentially means setting up rules to satisfy
the communication needs of both stakeholders and team members, and choosing appropriate
media and techniques to support these rules. Before going into detail, the project manager
ought to start by identifying key project stakeholders who have either a high interest in the
project or power over the project, and then determining their communication needs. This is
where Rule of Thumb No. 4 comes in:

Key stakeholders will expect communications suited to their preferences rather than to
the project manager’s preferences.

 2008 Maciej Kaniewski, Krystyna Burzyńska-Kaniewska, Jerzy Stawicki. All rights reserved 5/9
The project manager can then classify typical messages and subsequently define the possible
originators, recipients, events during which the message is transmitted (this can also include
the frequency or point in time), the media and the format (including any templates used)
taking stakeholder requirements into account. At this stage, it is important to select the most
effective communication media (meetings, phone conversations, e-mails, etc)., tools
(document sharing systems, videoconference facilities), document templates etc., based on
stakeholders expectations and good project management practices, taking the project’s
organizational structure (chains of command, team structure, workgroups etc.), logistics as
well as the environmental factors outlined above into consideration. The result can be
documented in the form of a communications matrix of the type shown below.

Recipients Recipient A Recipient B Recipient C ...

Messages
• what should be • message
communicated originator
• what format or • event, time or
template should frequency
be used • media
• transmission type

...

Fig. 1 A typical communications matrix

A more advanced communication matrix would also take escalation rules into account.
However, this tool is only useful for defining structured types of communication, such as
performance and status reporting, task assignments, Steering Committee meetings and similar
activities. Since non-structured or casual communication does not fit well into this scheme,
the communication matrix should be supplemented by a set of communication rules related
to the specific forms of communications, guided by best practices. Both the project matrix and
the communication rules will be influenced by the standards and practices in the performing
organization. The communications matrix together with the set of communication rules and
any necessary supplementary information form a communications management plan, which
is usually a part of the overall project management plan. The communications management
plan thus developed needs to be presented to project stakeholders and team members. In case
of complex projects, this can actually be the subject of a separate meeting.

5. Communication tools and techniques

At this stage, it might be worth while to take a closer look at some popular forms of project
communication and point out a few easy to implement and successful practices:

1. Meetings

Meetings are by far the most visible form of communication in project, loved by some and
despised by others. Typical purposes of meetings include:

• project initiating and planning activities, directed at understanding and defining the
project,
• sharing and interpreting information related to project status, open issues and risks,

 2008 Maciej Kaniewski, Krystyna Burzyńska-Kaniewska, Jerzy Stawicki. All rights reserved 6/9
• arriving at project decisions,
• problem discussion and solving related to the project subject matter,
• team building,
• conflict resolution.

Obviously, some of these purposes may overlap in a single meeting. However, it is generally
more productive to hold a meeting which has a single, well-defined purpose and does not
require significant changes of attitude from participants. This observation led to such
techniques as Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats. In this approach, each of the meeting
participants wears the same “hat” representing a particular attitude, i.e. White Hat – fact-
based, Red Hat – emotional, Black Hat – critical or risk-oriented, Yellow hat – positive or
success-oriented, Green Hat – creative, and Blue Hat – process control (seeing the big picture).
In more conventional terms, this means that a creative brainstorming session aimed at finding
project solutions should not be coupled with an analytical risk analysis session, since it might
be difficult for participants to switch roles. Astute project managers who have recognized this
fact will therefore plan different types of meetings depending on the nature of the project,
such as:

• Project (or project phase) kick-off meeting

• Planning session
• Decision-making session, (such as a Steering Committee meeting)
• Regular team meeting
• Project review, such as status review, milestone or phase review, final review
• Lessons learned session
• Conflict resolution meeting
• Formal project closure meeting

The setting, techniques and practices during each of these types of meetings may differ
depending on the purpose of the meeting and the participants. However, the Rule of Thumb
No. 5 may be helpful here:

Only the necessary meetings should be organized, because only the necessary meetings
will be productive.

For planning effective meetings, the following checklist could be helpful (ideally, the answer
to all questions should be “yes”):

• Does the planned meeting have a clear purpose?

• Is this purpose best served by arranging a meeting instead of some other means?
• Does the meeting have a subject?
• Does the meeting have an agenda?
• If there were previous meetings on the subject, will this meeting refer to them?
• Is the list of required participants known?
• Does the agenda take into account who needs to participate when?
• Is it known who will run or host the meeting?
• Is it known when and where the meeting will take place?
• Does the place and time take into account the participants’ availability?
• Will the appropriate technical means be provided?

 2008 Maciej Kaniewski, Krystyna Burzyńska-Kaniewska, Jerzy Stawicki. All rights reserved 7/9
Meetings which are well organized and have a clearly identified host will be favorably
received by participants. Here are a few simple, generic rules :

• The invitation should be sent out in advance to all the participants (mandatory and
optional ones should be distinguished), specifying the subject, agenda and expected
outcomes. Participants should be told if they are expected to prepare anything up front.
Since it may be difficult to ensure everyone’s availability in advance, project managers
often schedule meetings at specified standard times (e.g. on Tuesdays at 2 p.m.).
• A meeting accompanied by a visual presentation is easier to follow. A simple presentation
can be one slide with the agenda, whereas a detailed presentation will include several
slides to illustrate each of the points. Ideally, every slide should remind of the meeting
purpose and agenda.
• A meeting should have minutes which will later allow participants to review their own
statements, comment the meeting outcome and, last not least, see their own commitments.
Minute-taking can be a chore, but detailed minutes, even if redundant, may be used for
optimizing future meetings. Since meetings can be loaded with information, it is safest to
take minutes during a meeting to avoid misunderstandings. In fact, minutes can be then
displayed at the end of the meeting, which will allow participants to review and correct
what has been said.
• Minutes meetings should be easy to search, structured documents. A typical layout would
contain the meeting brief (subject, agenda, etc.) and sections containing information,
presented during the meeting, decisions taken, actions planned (who, what, when), open
issues and a reference to documents exchanged (if any).
• It is good practice to arrive earlier, check whether everything is in order and be ready to
welcome participants. If there will be a presentation, it should be already displayed when
the meeting begins.
• A meeting should start on time. In some cases, allowance will have to be made for the
arrival of important guests, but it would be polite to request consent for the delay from the
participants who are already in the meeting.
• During the course of the meeting:
o make sure that participants have a chance to get to know each other and understand
their respective roles,
o introduce the meeting subject and expected outcome,
o propose the meeting agenda and ask for comments - perhaps somebody would like to
extend the agenda,
o select someone to hold the minutes (unless you will do it yourself),
o manage the meeting actively, taking care that the meeting is kept in scope and within
the planned timeframe (including breaks) and participants keep up the required level of
activity.
• During the meeting wrap-up:
o thank the participants for their time,
o summarize the course of the meeting and its outcome,
o announce next steps.

These rules may be adapted to the specific type of meeting - a kick-off including top
management will probably be more formal or possibly split into a formal and informal part.

 2008 Maciej Kaniewski, Krystyna Burzyńska-Kaniewska, Jerzy Stawicki. All rights reserved 8/9
2. Phone calls, e-mails, phone conferences and videoconferences

Phone calls, e-mails, phone conferences and videoconferences are the other popular forms of
project communication. They also have their own best practices, but they are out of scope of
this article.

3. Other tools and techniques

Structured communication is best supported by project management IT systems, which allow

timesheet recording, task progress reporting, issue logging, risk reporting and the like, which
is beyond the scope of this article. Although the project manager usually does not have the
comfort of ordering a new IT system just for the purpose of one project, he or she should
nevertheless examine the possibilities of the existing infrastructure. There are some problems,
however, with using a dedicated project management IT system for communications:

• Project participants need to learn to use the system.

• Project participants may prefer to use traditional communication means rather than the
system, e.g. they will rather check their mailbox than look for system messages.
• Key stakeholders will probably not use the system.

Solving these issues is probably beyond the project manager’s competence and ought to be
handled within an overall management framework.

In addition, there are other popular communication tools available on the market:

• Chat is a good substitute for phones and phone conferences. It is less invasive, but still
synchronous. Chat transcripts can be stored and later used in project documents. The
downside is that it is slower and that the audio channel is not available for registering
emotions.
• Document sharing allows participants to view the meeting host’s screens on their
computers. In some solutions, the host can hand over control to the participants, which can
then make changes in the presented document. This is a useful facility which can be used
together with phone conferences or videoconferences for collaborative work.

6. Summary

This article has outlined the significance of communication for projects, in particular for
project management. It can be reiterated that communication management is a crucial project
management process, but is often underrated by project managers who tend to focus on the
“core” project management techniques such as scope, time and cost management. Yet
although communication may function intuitionally in simple projects, in more complex
projects it should be properly planned. Fortunately, communications planning is a common-
sense task which, in most projects, does not require specialized know-how, but general
planning skills coupled with the understanding of several basic rules. Projects with properly
planned communications should be not only easier to manage, but also more rewarding to
their participants.

 2008 Maciej Kaniewski, Krystyna Burzyńska-Kaniewska, Jerzy Stawicki. All rights reserved 9/9