Communication management is the knowledge area that employs the process required to ensure timely and properly generation, collection, distribution, storage, retrieval, and ultimate disposition of project information.

Objectives
Most projects should have a communication management plan. This plan describes the communication strategy for the project – how communication should be managed in the project.

All projects must have a communication plan. This is a detailed plan that points out who should communicate to whom, when and how.

Consider using a communication log to keep track of communication from the project.

Important tasks and actions
The basis for a communication plan is a stakeholder analysis. The stakeholder analysis should be provided at M1 and updated at each relevant M. Projects with many stakeholders, many stakeholder organisations, international projects and/or are dependent on close cooperation with stakeholders for any reason should use the templates provided below.

The project manager is responsible for:

• Developing and suggesting a communication strategy
• Planning communication management in the project
• Implementing the plans for communication
• Making it possible for project members to access relevant information and to develop relations with other project members, as well as with other stakeholders
• Evaluating and improving the communication in the project.

Important decisions must be approved by the project owner or the steering committee before they are communicated.

The communication plan is worked out early in the project process and should be based on the stakeholder analysis.

A stakeholder analysis should be provided at M1 and updated at each relevant M. Invite the project team and important stakeholders to the project kick-off meeting.

Run the Communication management presentation in the project team.

Documents