Effective Communication on Projects
Tanmay Vora
I am revisiting the topic of project communication again. Earlier, I wrote a post on “Quality of Project Communication” where I also summarized the aspects of effective communication.
In software projects, teams spend over 50% of time in communication – communication on project start up, scope, requirements, design, development standards, issues, clarifications, reviews and so on. Effective communication is the backbone of project success.
When managing a group of people with diverse personalities managing communication becomes vital. If team does not have a common understanding of the communication process, projects may run into problems even if project manager communicates well. The team members have to be trained/educated/programmed to carry out specific communication on specific instances. This also calls for establishing a basic “communication protocol” of set of rules that each team member has to adhere to.
Skip effectively summarizes effective communication as
- An Attitude – “I really want this effort to succeed.”
- Listening – Do you truly know what the other person is saying?
- Calm, even-keeled, yet passionate – A steady, yet firm belief in what one is saying.
- Timely – Avoid allowing resentments to build; don’t let the passage of time allow the issue(s) to become greater than it actually is.
- Separating the person from the issue – Target the issue, not the person; avoid putting them on the defensive.
- Focusing on problem solving – Does not focus on affixing blame.
- Persistent – Doesn’t give up easily; recognizes communication is hard work.
- Recognizing and giving validity to one’s perceptions as real – People act on their perceptions because what they perceive is truly what they believe to be truth.
- Honest and straightforward – Avoid being vague and indirect.
- Attentive to both delivery and content – How one says it may be more important than what one says. Delivery = process (how one says it). Content = message (what one says).