project quality and

Running head: COMMUNICATION PLAN 1

COMMUNICATION PLAN 10

Communication Plan

Institution

Name

Project Communication Plan

Purpose

Communication is a key element for every successful project. A project manager is required to identify all the project’s communication needs and their timeline. Project manager use communication plan to reach key stakeholders for the purpose of providing them with direction, information, and any update regarding the project’s status or progress (Muller & Turner, 2017). Communication is crucial in ensuring that stakeholders align their efforts with the goals, requirements, and schedules of the project being implemented (Binder, 2016). Through effective communication, all the key stakeholders can be engage in fruitful discussions which lead to better understanding and decision making.

Communication dominates the real landscape of project management. Project managers need to communicate the project scope, expectations, and objectives to the project team. On the other hand, project sponsors and steering committee require updates on the project progress and budget estimations (Muszynska et al., 2015). Project manager will encourage regular communication with project team members so as to get a glimpse of the issues and challenges they encounter in the course of implementing the project within the given timeline. Thus, a communication plan helps the project manager to provide direction to stakeholders and drive the overall project success (Leach, 2014).

Project Overview

project covered in this paper involves the upgrade of IRTC Manufacturing Enterprise’s legacy billing system. Notably, the current system has been in existence for over ten years now and due to technological advancements, there is need to upgrade the system in order to meet the organizational needs. This major upgrade is geared towards refining the current business processes, enhance efficiency, reduce the cost of operations, as well as improve customer satisfaction. The sheer size and significance of the project to the organization calls for effective planning and execution.

Notably, communication remains at the center of the project implementation (Austin & Pinkleton, 2015). As a project manager, communicating with my team is crucial so as to get all relevant information regarding this key upgrade. Moreover, I will be required to communication regularly with the project supervisors, sponsors, and steering committee in order to give them all the updates regarding issues and status of the project. Notably, there is need for me to develop a detailed communication plan that will guide the communication needs throughout the project (Kerzner, 2017).

Stakeholders Identification

The process of upgrading IRTC’s legacy billing system requires a number of key stakeholders ranging from project sponsors, steering committee, and well as the implementation team. This section will highlight all the stakeholders who will be engaged in IRTC project alongside a few description of roles.

· Project sponsor

The project sponsor will be the director of the Billing department who has been sponsoring all the major upgrades regarding this system. The project sponsor will be tasked with all major decisions regarding the projects.

· Business Analyst

A business analyst is tasked with viewing the entire system and highlight key areas which require to be upgraded in order to reflect the needs of the organization.

· Technical Architect

The role of technical architect will be to define the entire structure of the system being upgraded in order to ensure that all parts of the upgraded system are running smoothly.

· Programmers

Programmers will be tasked with developing software codes meant to upgrade the company’s legacy billing system.

· Technical Writer

The technical writer will play a key role in documenting key parts of the system being upgraded.

· Trainer

A trainer will be required to train the departments affected by the system upgrade on the new way of handling it. Employees working the customer service and billing department will be trained on how to interact with the upgraded system and all other major functionalities.

· Steering Committee

This committee will be tasked with overseeing the progress of the new project and whether everything is aligned to organizational goals and objectives. It will involve representatives from the customer support department, billing department, and IT department.

Communication Plan

Stakeholder Group	Communication Mechanism	Frequency of Communication	Format
Project Sponsor	Oral Written	Weekly	Meetings Video Conferencing PPT Presentations Excel for Budgets Reports
Business Analyst	Interpersonal Written Non-verbal	Anytime	Emails Memos Phone calls
Technical Architect	Interpersonal Written Non-verbal	Anytime	Emails Memos Phone calls
Programmers	Interpersonal Written Non-verbal	Anytime	Emails Memos Phone calls
Technical Writer	Interpersonal Written Non-verbal	Anytime	Emails Memos Phone calls
Trainer	Interpersonal Written Non-verbal	Anytime	Emails Memos Phone calls
Steering Committee	Oral Written Interpersonal	After 4 days	Meetings Video Conferencing PPT Presentation Reports

Secondary Stakeholders

Secondary stakeholders refer to those that have a significant influence in the project but they are not directly involved in the project. Despite the fact that the project affects them in one way or the other, they are not engaged in the process of developing or upgrading the system (Thijssens, Bollen & Hassink, 2015). Notably, the secondary stakeholders involved the “upgrade of IRTC’s legacy billing system” are the customers. Considerably, the system gives customers the opportunity to access and pay for their bills online. Moreover, the once the system has been upgraded, customers can access the billing customer care agent any time they need them. From this view, the system will have a huge impact to the customers although they will not will be involved directly in its upgrade. The system upgrade will indeed make it easier for the customers to pay for their services at the comfort of their homes or wherever they are without visiting the company physically.

However, there is need to ensure that the system upgrade creates maximum customer satisfaction. The user interface should be easy and interactive in order to make it easy for customers to use it. Thus, the project team should keep in mind the needs of the secondary stakeholders whole conducting a system upgrade. The procedures to be followed should be easy in order to allow customers to enter all the necessary details required for them to pay for products and services (Meredith, Mantel & Shafer, 2017). The process of creating a user account should be easy and customers should have a room to recover their passwords if forgotten. Generally, the user interface should be kept simple and attractive using clear themes.

The Role of the Initiator and Recipient

According to Tipili & Ojeba (2014), effective communication consists of the sender and the receiver. Project communications will be channeled to the recipients by the project manager through a medium which can either be an email, memo, phone call, oral presentation, among others. Both the initiator of the message and the recipient facilitate a successful communication process. Effective communication cannot take place unless the message serves the intended purpose which is to bring a mutual understanding (Coombs, 2014). For instance, when a project manager sends a memo to the business analyst, the recipient should interpret the message and act accordingly. Thus, the initiator has a responsibility of composing a message regarding something, let us say budget challenge, and send it to the project sponsor. The project sponsor will interpret the message depending on the convincing power of the sender and decide to act by allocating the required resources to facilitate the process of project execution.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the success of any project depends on effective communication among the key stakeholder. There is need for a project manager to identify the project’s communication needs and develop a communication plan that will ensure effective exchange of information among various key stakeholders throughout the project implementation process. The project managers should give directions to team members and let them share various issues regarding the project. The PM can thus compile a report about the status of the project and channel it to the project sponsors, supervisors, as well as the steering committee. The rationale of this communication plan is based on the fact that stakeholders are not the same hence the need to group them according to their interest and influence to project. Since stakeholders are not the same, it is equally important to communicate with them using various channels. All stakeholders do not require the same information, for instance, the information required by business analyst is not the same as the one required by the project sponsors. Moreover, the channel and mechanism of communication cannot be the same. Their availability also differs hence there is need for proper timing of the communication. Thus, the above listed factors forms the basis for developing a communication plan to address the varying needs of the key project stakeholders.

References

Austin, E. W., & Pinkleton, B. E. (2015). Strategic public relations management: Planning and managing effective communication campaigns. Routledge.

Binder, J. (2016). Global project management: communication, collaboration and management across borders. Routledge.

Coombs, W. T. (2014). Ongoing crisis communication: Planning, managing, and responding. Sage Publications.

Kerzner, H. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Leach, L. P. (2014). Critical chain project management. Artech House.

Meredith, J. R., Mantel Jr, S. J., & Shafer, S. M. (2017). Project management: a managerial approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Muller, R., & Turner, J. R. (2017). Project-oriented leadership. Routledge.

Muszynska, K., Dermol, K., Trunk, V., Ðakovic, A., & Smrkolj, G. (2015, May). Communication management in project teams–practices and patterns. In Joint International Conference (pp. 1359-1566).

Thijssens, T., Bollen, L., & Hassink, H. (2015). Secondary stakeholder influence on CSR disclosure: An application of stakeholder salience theory. Journal of Business Ethics, 132(4), 873-891.

Tipili, L. G., & Ojeba, P. O. (2014, July). Evaluating the effects of communication in construction project delivery in Nigeria. In Proceedings of the Multi-Disciplinary Academic Conference on Sustainable Development.