In today's world of Instant Messaging, Blackberries, and WebEx Meetings, one would anticipate that communications now are better than they ever have been and that managing communications in a project should be improving. However, what appears to be happening is that we are moving away from planning our project communications and into a world of all ad-hoc, last minute communications forcing decisions to be made with less clear information than what is otherwise available. My editorial this quarter provides a generic approach for communication planning that can be used on any size project and can still utilize today's tools, but establishes structure such that decisions are not only made more efficient, but are also made with better information.

As a project manager, you already (or at least you should) know that communications is a key component to the success of any project. The Project Management Institute claims that 90% of the project manager's time should be spent on communications. However, how much time do you as a project manager spend on planning your communications compared to planning and executing your project tasks, cost, etc.? I see very few projects (large or small) where formal communication planning and control techniques are utilized - making me wonder, if 90% of a PM's time should be spent on communications, what are these project managers doing?

Often times a communication plan is created as a simple documents that will list out communication vehicles, when they are to be used, list of stakeholders, etc. But these plans are typically created by an individual with the aspirations that it is a complete plan which can be "rolled out" to the broader team and project stakeholders. Although important to communication plans, such plans are incomplete. You wouldn't try to create a WBS by yourself as a PM and roll it out to your team without their input would you? So why do the same with a communication plan? A great approach that I was taught in b-school was to make use of a white board and Post-in notes. On the whiteboard, list the major phases of the project across the top and then have the team agree on all project stakeholders down the left hand side. Independently, have the team fill in the Post-it's with the following:

• The What? Identify what needs to be communicated
• The How? List how the communication should occur, and remember this can be various formats (formal, informal, written, verbal, etc)
• The When? List the event trigger as to when the communication should occur
• Who? List who is responsible for developing and delivering the communication

Team members will then place the Post-its on the whiteboard in appropriate cells indicating the general phase of the communication event and the target audience of the communication. Note that some team members will get frustrated by having to repeat the same Post-It note for multiple groups.

Now as a project manager, you have just received your entire team's input into the communication plan. You can take this information and pull it back into your favorite tool (Excel, Word, etc.) and share the results. Now, just like a base-lined WBS you can use the result of this exercise throughout the life of your project to ensure all project stakeholders are kept up-to-date based on a pre-defined plan as opposed to the scrambling, last minute, ad-hoc communication approach which is all too common in today's business world.