Project Management: Communication Plan Assessment and Recommendations

This report evaluates the current communication plan for a project on Public Health Informatics and provides recommendations for improvement. It assesses the plan against project management practices and justifies the recommendations made.

Running head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Project Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
Current Project Communication Plan..................................................................................2
Communication Plan assessment Vs Project Management Practice...................................3
Recommendations................................................................................................................4
Justification of the Recommendation..................................................................................5
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................5
References............................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
A communication plan can be considered as a policy driven approach that mainly aims at
providing certain information to the stakeholders. A project communication plan mainly defines
the process by which information can be delivered to the communication channels so that it
reaches the intended receiver. This report considers a communication plan for a project that deals
with the development of an integrated public health information system. A communication plan
for this project is developed in order to engage the project stakeholders in a collaborative
process. The communication plan was developed in order to ensure that there is no scope of
communication breakdown and that appropriate correspondence exists among the stakeholders of
the project [2]. The report will evaluate the current communication plan and will provide certain
recommendations on the different communication plans.
Current Project Communication Plan
One of the significant needs of implementing a communication plan in this project is to
ensure that appropriate correspondence exists among all the stakeholders of the project. In order
to engage the stakeholders in a collaborative communication process, it was necessary to develop
a proper communication plan [1]. The communication plan provided a detailed plan of the
project stakeholders, issues with the stakeholders, communication methods that the stakeholders
can use for communication. The communication plan was developed for this project as the
project previously failed due to the lack of proper communication and information flow among
the stakeholders.
One of the major issue associated with the current project communication plan is that it is
quite complex. This is mainly because in the communication plan, all the key stakeholders are

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given the responsibility of providing continuous information on the project status report.
However, the project communication plan should have been more linear and it was necessary to
provide the details about the area of key messages each stakeholder is needed to address [4].
Furthermore, a communication plan should be easy to understand so that each project
stakeholder can easily follow the communication plan. This communication plan that is followed
in this project however did its job quite effectively. There were still chances of improvement in
the communication plan of the project according to the different project management practices
The communication plan is assessed on basis of the project management practice in the
following section.
Communication Plan assessment Vs Project Management Practice
One of the top project management practices is tracking and reporting the project
progress. A communication plan is generally made in order to report the project progress to the
stakeholders associated with the project. Each team members should take a responsibility of
tracking a particular area of project progress and should communicate the progress to the other
stakeholders as well [6]. In this communication plan, proper allocation of responsibility to the
team members was not done which is considered one of the significant issues associated with the
communication plan that is developed for the project.
Project planning is an important aspect of project management as it ensures that the
project is implemented in a set schedule. The communication plan is to be developed during the
planning stage of the project [3]. The communication plan to be developed should be liner with
the deliverables of a project and therefore it is needed to develop a communication plan in the
planning stage of the project.

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Recommendations
Both the internal and external stakeholders of the project are needed to be incorporated in
the project communication plan [7]. Certain processes are needed to be followed for developing
an effective communication plan for a project, which are listed below-
1. An effective communication plan should include all the internal as well as the external
components of a project. An internal communication plan includes every people who are
involved in a project [5]. The external communication plan includes the involvement of external
stakeholders in the communication process so that the project progress is effectively
communicated to all the members associated with the project.
2. The communication plan should include a clear and the measurable project goals and
strategies of a project. The need of project goals to be specific is important to accomplish the
goals of developing a project communication plan.
3. One of the major issues associated with the communication plan that is developed for
the project is that it did not have proper details about the target audiences of the project. The type
of messages that can be communicated to the stakeholders should be clearly drafted in the
communication plan.
4. Proper identification of the message frame is necessary for developing an appropriate
communication plan for the project is necessary.
5. Furthermore, it was essential to develop communication schedule, which was not
followed in this case. It was necessary to determine when to announce how will merger or
acquisition of different groups or members of project team will receive communication.

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Justification of the Recommendation
The recommendations made in the previous section are justified as it is important for an
organization or a project to clarify the goals and objectives of the project so that the necessary
information can be properly routed. Identification of the internal and the external activities of the
project are essential in order to identify and implement the variety of the communication
activities in the communication plan [8]. Proper definition of the communication activities and
the medium of communication are essential so that the progress of the project can be properly
tracked or informed.
Conclusion
The report assesses the current project communication plan that was developed for the
project of Public Health Informatics. Although the communication plan that was developed
served its purpose, there were certain issues with the plan which is discussed in this report. The
communication plan should have been more structured and the role of each member in the
communication plan should have been properly defined. The report provides certain
recommendations for brining in much needed improvements in the communication plan. The
recommendations made on the communication plan are justified as it provides solutions to
mitigate the issues associated with the current communication plan.

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References
[1]. Szeberenyi, A. Project Communication Plan. No. AIDA-2020-MS4. 2015.
[2]. Heagney, Joseph. Fundamentals of project management. AMACOM Div American Mgmt
Assn, 2016.
[3]. Todorović, Marija Lj, Dejan Č. Petrović, Marko M. Mihić, Vladimir Lj Obradović, and
Sergey D. Bushuyev. "Project success analysis framework: A knowledge-based approach in
project management." International Journal of Project Management 33, no. 4 (2015): 772-783.
[4]. Verčič, Ana Tkalac, Dejan Verčič, and Krishnamurthy Sriramesh. "Internal communication:
Definition, parameters, and the future." Public relations review 38, no. 2 (2012): 223-230.
[5]. Gracis, Stefano, Konstantinos Michalakis, Paolo Vigolo, Per Vult von Steyern, Marcel
Zwahlen, and Irena Sailer. "Internal vs. external connections for abutments/reconstructions: a
systematic review." Clinical oral implants research 23, no. s6 (2012): 202-216.
[6]. Binder, Jean. Global project management: communication, collaboration and management
across borders. Routledge, 2016.
[7]. Kerzner, Harold, and Harold R. Kerzner. Project management: a systems approach to
planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons, 2017.
[8]. Schwalbe, Kathy. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning, 2015.