Project Communication Plan 2/2

3.0 Lateral Communication

This tends to take place either with other departments within the Organisations you work with ie Finance, or more commonly with external Vendors, Clients or 3d party providers.

Through this channel project communication can involve almost anything from progress on deliverables, to acquiring resources and even renegotiating scope of work and it's cost.

This would be done through:

• Statement of Work (SOW)
• Contracts
• Project Initiation Document
• Email
• Project Communication Plan Part 1

Please note the level of communication with external suppliers is dependent upon what management overhead was included in the Statement of Work and Contracts, so take this into account when devising your project communication plan. Further this will vary depending on the stage of the project. So for example whilst capturing project management requirements this might be weekly, but by the time you enter the final testing phase of the project management life cycle, you could easily be having daily or even hourly meetings to discuss progress.

Project Communication Plan Example

Please see below an example of how the average Project Management Communications Plan could look and would usually be written within the project initiation document.

Groups/ Individuals involved	Type of Communication	Frequency	Purpose
Project Manager to Programme Board	Programme Board Meeting	Weekly	Provide updates on progress of deliverables and risks and issues
Project Manager to Programme Board	Project Management Report	Weekly	Discussion on key items from the Highlight Reports as required.
Project Manager and Workstream Leads	Checkpoint Report	Weekly dependent on tasks delivered	Provide updates on progress of deliverables and risks and issues
Project Manager and Workstream Leads	Team Meeting	Weekly	Review progress and status of risks and issues

Project Communication Plan - Tip

Remember all these communication channels are two way. By this I mean that they are not just there for you to report progress, but also there are others to provide you with their feedback, problems and thoughts.

Make sure you remember this as it is a good way to find out what is going on, and also to head off any problems before they get out of control. And anything which means you don't have to write an exception report can't be a bad thing!

Lastly remember your project communication plan is not set in stone. It needs to be flexible to fit in with the ever changing needs of your project. So don't forget this ,nor lose sight of the fact that a project communication plan is there to facilitate effective communication with your team and suppliers. It is not there simply to be a document which when completed can be ticked off the ITQA checklist as being done, and then promptly forgotten about.

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