Importance of communication management

Project communication management includes the processes needed to ensure timely and appropriate planning, collection, creation, distribution, storage, retrieval, management, control, monitoring and ultimate disposition of project information. Project managers spend about 90% of their time communicating, so its importance is high.

Importance

1. Links stakeholders: connects people with different cultures, interests and expectations to the project.
2. Prevents misunderstanding: clarifies requirements, scope, roles and expectations, avoiding rework.
3. Keeps the project on track: timely status, issues and risks support early corrective action.
4. Supports decision making: managers and sponsors get accurate information on time.
5. Builds team cohesion and motivation: open communication builds trust and reduces conflict.
6. Manages stakeholder expectations: avoids surprises, improves customer satisfaction.
7. Coordinates work: dependencies among teams and vendors are managed.
8. Controls changes: change requests and decisions are communicated to everyone affected.
9. Early risk and issue detection: encourages people to report problems.
10. Provides documentation and records for audits, contracts, and lessons learned.
11. Handles virtual and global teams through suitable tools.

Processes (PMBOK)

Plan communications -> Manage communications
                    -> Control communications

Number of communication channels

Channels = n(n − 1)/2. For a team of 10, 45 channels exist; for 20 people, 190. More people greatly increase complexity, so planning is required.

Example: A weekly status email and a short stand-up meeting keep a 10-member software team and the client updated, and a delay in vendor delivery is reported early so the schedule is adjusted.