Project Proposal: Assessing Communication in Project Management

This project proposal aims to assess the significance of communication in ensuring quality and timely delivery of project activities. It investigates the role of communication within a cultural context and its effectiveness in overcoming cultural barriers among project teams. The research employs both qualitative and quantitative approaches, supplemented by a review of existing literature. The proposal outlines research questions focusing on the impact of communication on project timelines and quality, and seeks to identify optimal communication methods for project success. The study's objectives include determining the impact of communication on timely project delivery, evaluating its role in maintaining high project quality, and identifying the best communication methods for organizational project success. The literature review examines previous studies on communication in project management, covering internal and external communication, knowledge sharing, and formal/informal communication methods. The research methodology includes data collection, sampling, data analysis, ethical considerations, a research budget, and a timeline.

Project Management Proposal

Table of Contents
Project Title................................................................................................................................3
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Research purpose...................................................................................................................4
Research questions.................................................................................................................4
Research objectives................................................................................................................5
Research significance.............................................................................................................5
Literature Review.......................................................................................................................5
Role of communication in project management....................................................................6
Impact of communication on quality and timely delivery of project.....................................8
Research Methodology.............................................................................................................10
Research approach...............................................................................................................10
Data collection.....................................................................................................................11
Sampling..............................................................................................................................12
Data analysis............................................................................................................................12
Ethical considerations..............................................................................................................13
Research Budget.......................................................................................................................13
Research Timeline....................................................................................................................14
References................................................................................................................................14

Project Title
The project proposal topic will be “Assessing the importance of communication in
maintaining quality and timely delivery of project activities”.
Introduction
Communication plays an essential role in determining the success of a project. The reason for
the failure of most of the projects is lack of communication. Project management
communication is a skill which can never be perfected but, can be improved every time to
maintain the timely delivery of the project with high quality. The team which is responsible
for completing the projects consists of a diverse group of people and thus, there is need for
effective communication so that the information related to projects is transferred to them
properly ( Business Insight Ltd, 2018). It is essentially important for the timely delivery of
the projects, as the project’s success or failure determines the success or failure of any
business. There is need for efficient communication about the responsibility, goals, feedback
and expectations of the project, and, a project manager is responsible for making the
communication effective among all team members. If all these things are communicated in an
effective manner, the project overcomes all the barriers and challenges easily and hence, the
project is completed on time and lives up to the quality expectations as well (Rajkumar,
2010).

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Figure 1: The impact of ineffective communication on the projects
Source: (Project Management Institute, Inc., 2013)
The research will conduct an assessment of the importance of communication in maintaining
quality and timely delivery of project activities. It also tries to explore the role of
communication in a cultural setting and how the communicates helps in overcoming the
cultural barriers between the project teams to ensure the timely delivery of projects. For this
purpose, both qualitative and quantitative approach will be adopted, along with the study of
the previously established literature in the space.
Research purpose
The aim of this research is to evaluate the role of communication in project management. It
analyses how effective communication can help in maintaining the timely and quality
delivery of the projects and how is it related to the success of the organization. The study will
review the previous literature and conduct primary studies to determine the impact of
communication on project success.
Research questions
1. What is the impact of communication on the timely delivery of the project?
2. How does effective communication help in maintaining high quality of the project?

3. What is the best method of communication an organization must follow to ensure
project success?
Research objectives
 To determine the impact of communication on the timely delivery of the project
 To evaluate how effective communication helps in maintaining high quality of the
project
 To determine the best method of communication an organization must follow to
ensure project success
Research significance
The study deals with the identification of the role played by effective communication, in
completing the project on time and with the expected levels of quality. The findings of this
research will help the organizations to improve their methods of communication and
developing them in a way that they overcome all the barriers.
Literature Review
The study of the previously established literature will allow us to accumulate and understand
the findings of the researches, conducted by the researchers in the same space in the past few
years. The literature review is considered to be one of the most reliable sources of data
collection. The literature review will be done with the help of the research literature collected
in the form of articles retrieved from respected journals, conference proceedings, books, and
statistics provided by the government. The results, which will be collected through the
primary research, will later be compared with the results of literature review to establish their
validity (Hart, 2009).

Role of communication in project management
Weldearegay (2012) conducted a research to investigate the role of communication in project
management. The study was conducted in Umea 2014 project office. The company follows
both the internal and external method of communication. The main aim of the author was to
investigate the role of project communication in a particular cultural setting. The author also
investigated the role of communication in the delivery of the project on time. They conducted
the study using qualitative approach where they interviewed the project managers to
understand the role of communication in ensuring project success. The main topics which
they studied in the research include external and internal communication, knowledge sharing,
communications system, formal and informal communication and such others. The results
suggested that meetings, non-verbal communication, mail correspondence and informal
communication and share point were a few methods of communication in the organization
(Weldearegay, 2012).
Rajkumar (2010) also conducted the similar study determining the role of communication in
project management. According to him, the better the communication better is the project
management. According to him, a project manager spends about 90% of his time in managing
the communication between his employees and the management and the employees. If the
communication is not effective, there is a risk of missing the deliverables and giving the
expected outcomes as expected by the sponsors. He also mentioned the types of
communication, how does the communication help in overcoming the obstacles and facilitate
the timely delivery of the project. The results of his research suggested that if the
communication is effective, a lot of time can be saved and thus, the project can be completed
before or on time (Rajkumar, 2010).
Tushman and Katz (2010) conducted a study to determine the role of external communication
in the success as well as the performance of the project. They highlighted the role of the

gatekeepers in improving the external communication and performance of the project. They
indicated that some boundary spanning gatekeepers serve as the linking mechanism between
the external environments and the organizations. They investigated the role of these
gatekeepers in transferring the information in one R&D setting, by making comparisons
between the performance of the project with and without the gatekeepers. The study they
conducted used the secondary approach. The results of the research indicated that the
gatekeepers perform the linking role in the projects which involve tasks which are locally-
oriented, whereas, the tasks which are universally-oriented were not found to use gatekeepers
to play the linking role. These tasks were linked to the external areas by direct project
member communication. The authors also found out that the role played by gatekeepers is
beyond serving just as the mediators in the external communication. They also facilitate the
external communication among the local project colleagues. The communication mediated by
gatekeepers as well as the direct communication, are two effective measures to link the
project with the external areas (Tushman & Katz, 2010).
There have been a number of researches which have focussed on improving the performance
of the project through effective communication. The projects are aimed at accomplishing the
strategic objectives within an organization. They are conceived and executed on a routine
basis. Therefore, the spending on the project is increasing exponentially by the companies
and the project management is on an exponential growth. But many a times, the projects fail
to accomplish their objectives. There are many factors which are responsible for project
failure and thus, there is a need to improve the performance factors which determine the
failure of project such as leadership, communication and such others (Civil Engineering
Research Foundation, 2005). Anantatmula (2015) also conducted a similar research for
determining the factors which are responsible for the success and failure of a project. He
developed a performance enhancement model using the Interpretive Structural Modelling

(ISM) methodology. The main aim of this project was to determine the relationship between
the factors which influence the performance of the project. Communication was found out to
be one of the major factors influencing the performance of the project. It, further, provided
the ways in which project management can be used to make strategic decisions for improving
the performance of the project (Anantatmula, 2015).
Impact of communication on quality and timely delivery of project
Hirst and Mann (2009) studied the relationship between the R&D leadership and team
communication on the quality of the project. According to the authors, Industrial R&D is all
about processing the new knowledge and transforming it into an outcome which is
commercially valuable. Communication is the most effective mechanism which translates,
integrates and shares the new information into the commercial processes and products
(Zwikael & Globerson, 2009). The authors developed a five-factor model for making team
communication effective which included team boundary spanning, leadership role
performance, team reflexivity, communication style, and task communication. They tested
the model using a longitudinal study for one year. The conducted the study of 350 employees
to check the effectiveness of the model through surveys. The findings of their study
suggested that different factors of the model predicted different ratings of the stakeholders in
terms of project performance. The strongest predictor of the customer ratings of the
performance was found to be the communication safety. Boundary spanning was also found
to be an effective tool for determining the project performance when the project is performed
by the project leader only, not his entire team (Hirst & Mann, 2009).
The National Academies in the USA, conducted a study in 2005 to understand the role of
communication in ensuring the success of the project. They conducted the research to analyze
the role of communication in improving the quality of the healthcare system using the
technological aspects of information sharing and transfer. The Committee showed that the

healthcare society needs more information and communication technologies to improve the
healthcare standards, quality and productivity in the healthcare system. The communication
among the team members allows any organization to work well and function as per the
requirements (Sumner, 2010). The healthcare sector has to include many projects to maintain
their functioning and these projects can be accomplished with success only when the goals of
the project and the ways to achieve them are properly communicated among the team
members. If the members of the team are able to communicate well and do not face any
barriers, the goals of the project are easily communicated and the quality of the project is
maintained as per the required standards. Thus, the incorporation of different methods of
communication and employing the technology in communication allows the employees to
share their ideas and thoughts and hence, the project becomes a success (National Academies,
2009).
Pinto and Pinto (2011) studied the importance of communication among the members of the
project team for the successful delivery of the projects on time and with high quality,
particularly in the R&D laboratory setting. The researchers also tried to establish the relation
between the cross-functional cooperation and patterns of communication in the management
and development of the new programs. Turner and Muller also assessed the role of informal
and formal communication among the members of a project team and analyze which one
provides better results. They also indentified the major reasons for communication among the
project team members along with the level of functional cooperation achieved by them in
case they are asked to develop a new program (Turner & Müller, 2008). For this, Pinto and
Pinto & Pinto (2011) surveyed about 260 employees from 72 hospitals and the results of the
research suggested that there was a huge difference in the project performance of the teams
with low cooperation and high cooperation. The low cooperation teams used formal
communication methods more than the high cooperation teams and hence, the members of

the project team were not able to express their ideas effectively. Thus, communication was
found to be the factor influencing the cross-functional cooperation which, in turn, predicted
the project outcomes (Pinto & Pinto, 2011).
Some of the researchers studied the role of effective communication among the members of
the project team and the main topic of study for them was to interpret the role of social media
in maintaining an effective communication in the organization. With the increasing
prevalence of the social media and its impact in the social relations, the business
organizations are also trying to make the most of it. Social media has proved to be an
effective means of communication among the people of the world and thus, it also plays an
effective role in managing the relationships between the people of the company. It induces
the trend of informal communication among the people of the organization and improves the
relationships between them. This leads to better performance of the project and ensures the
timely delivery of the project as per the pre-determined standards of quality. The positive
effect of social media can be moderated by leadership styles and motivation provided by the
organization (Delerue & Sicotte, 2017).
Research Methodology
This chapter will emphasize on the research approach which will be adopted for conducting
the research. it will include the tools, methods and techniques used to achieve the objectives
of the research. the research methodology will consist of the following parts (Saunders,
Lewis, & Thornhill, 2009).
Research approach
The research approach which will be adopted for this research can be termed as mixed
approach as both the qualitative and quantitative methods will be used for conducting this
research. The quantitative research is designed to get the response from a large number of

respondents. This research approach is beneficial as the data collected through this research is
generalized as it is depicts the opinion of a population. The data collected through
quantitative research can be easily expressed in the form of numbers, which makes the
application of the statistical tools easy (Sekaran & Bougie, 2016). The qualitative study, on
the other hand, is used when the sample size is less and data can be collected through it in
descriptive form. The reason for choosing this method is that it will provide a detailed
account of the topic and will help in getting industry-specific insights (Sandelowski, 2012).
Data collection
The data will be collected using both primary and secondary methods of data collection. The
primary research will be conducted through surveys and interviews. The secondary research,
on the other hand, will be conducted through literature review. The primary research will help
us in collecting the first hand data from respondents who are directly connected with the
research topic, such as project team members or the project manager. The secondary research
is equally beneficial in reaching towards the conclusion as the data collected through
secondary study is highly reliable and the findings of primary research will be compared to
the findings of secondary research to establish the validity of the data. The final results of the
research will be equally based on the findings of both the methods of data collection
(Scandura & Williams, 2017).
The primary data will be collected through survey and interview. The survey will be
conducted with the help of a questionnaire which will contain a series of 15 close-ended
questions about project management and the way in which project management is affected by
communication. The respondents will have to answer the questions of the survey on a five
point Likert scale. The questionnaires will be chosen for survey as they are practical and cost
efficient. The interview will be conducted by a series of a few open ended questions which
will aim at knowing the role played by communication in timely delivery of project from the

perspective of the managers. The interviews will ensure in-depth analysis of the research
topic (Lavrakas, 2008).
Sampling
Choosing the correct sample for conducting the research is equally important as the entire
results of the research rely on the data collected through the selected samples (Sharma, 2017).
The research will be conducted on the employees working in a project team as well as the
project managers. In this research, the random sampling method will be used. The reason
behind choosing random sampling method is the fact that, this method of sampling allows all
the members in a population to get selected equally with no biasness. A random sample of 20
members of a project team will be selected from an organization and survey will be
conducted. Apart from this, three project managers will be selected for interview. The
random sampling method will give an equal chance of representation to all the employees
(Thompson, 2012).
Data analysis
The data, which will be collected through quantitative research, i.e., the survey, will be
analyzed using MS Excel. The reason behind using this statistical tool is the fact that it allows
the users to create the reports, pie charts and do the calculations with ease. It can easily
compare the differences between the responses of the respondents pertaining to one or more
questions or variables. The qualitative data will be analyzed through interview analysis. All
the results obtained will be compared to the findings of literature review and the final
conclusions will be made (Bryman & Bell, 2015).

Ethical considerations
Before conducting the research, an approved consent of the participants will be obtained and
they will be ensured that their identities will be kept anonymous. For eliminating the
probability of error, the data will be collected through the reliable sources and will be
analyzed using appropriate tools. An application form approval will be submitted to the
selected organization for obtaining their consent for conducting the research. The participants
will be asked o sign the consent forms before participating in the research. The collected data
will be stored in the password protected laptops for maintaining its confidentiality. All the
communications related to the research will be pursued with honesty and transparency
(Zikmund, Babin, Carr, & Griffin, 2013).
Research Budget
The total estimated budget for this research will be approximately AUD 7,000. The budget
will include the costs of the computer software packages such as SPSS, regression and such
others; hardware components of the computer, membership cost for Office 365 and
employing a research helper for the data analysis part. The following table will provide a
brief outlook of the research costs.
Activities Approximate Costs in AUD
SPSS statistical tool AUD 2,500
Computer hardware such as monitor, hard drives and such
others
AUD 1,500
Office 365 AUD 160
Research Helper AUD 3,000

Research Timeline
Chapters Time duration
Introduction 14 days
Literature Review 21 days
Research questions and objectives 7 days
Research Methodology 21 days
Analysis to be undertaken 14 days
Conclusion and Recommendations 7 days
Compilation of the report 10 days
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communication-the-key-to-successful-project-management
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