The Importance of Communication Planning

Anytime you implement new technology, improve upon existing technology or simply intend to implement a project that impacts departments, or groups of people in any direct way you should always have a communication plan.

One of the biggest things I see often is a project reaching implementation (or sometimes after implementation, if your lucky a bit before) not having a sufficient communication plan (or any at all in some cases).

What is a communication plan? To me it is the planned method and pattern to which you will notify your target audience, and improve user response and acceptance. It has a target audience (or several) and the key messages or benefits that the target audience(s) are recieving from your new system.

It lets users know how they will be effected, when and how they can receive training, when the new system will impact them and/or be available, what tools they will have available to them, related resources to decrease load on trainers and administrators while providing users with the tools to evangelise and get excited about it on their own.

Letting the effected users know how it will effect their day to day jobs or their business processes in a planned manner will allow you to improve overall acceptance, understanding and decrease the resistance always encountered when a change is implemented.

So next time you write a project plan, or are working in a project find out if there is a communication plan, and if not, find out why, because odds are in almost every situation your project induces change, and without a plan for how to handle that change and communicate it to the effected audience the change will not be as well received.

Communicating my message to you,
Richard

Explore posts in the same categories: Change Management, Project Management, Project Planning

Tags: Change Management, Communications, Training, User Acceptance

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