Identifying and Analyzing Communication Problems in Project Management

This report delves into the critical role of communication within project management, emphasizing its importance for successful project completion. It begins by establishing the background and importance of effective communication, highlighting its role in stakeholder management and information exchange. The report identifies common communication issues, such as verbal and environmental barriers, and the misinterpretation of messages. It then outlines the research methodology, including the research philosophy (positivism), approach (deductive), and design (descriptive), used to analyze these issues. The report aims to identify communication problems and propose solutions to mitigate their impact, ultimately enhancing project outcomes. The literature review explores the significance of communication in project management, citing various research papers and studies to support the arguments. Finally, the methodology section provides a detailed overview of the research approach, design, and data collection methods employed to investigate the identified communication issues and offer effective solutions.

Running head: COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS
Communication Problems
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Table of Contents
1 Introduction:.................................................................................................................................2
1.1 Background:......................................................................................................................2
1.2 Problem statement:............................................................................................................3
1.3 Aim, Objective and Research Question............................................................................3
2 Literature Review:....................................................................................................................4
2.1 Importance of Communication in Project:............................................................................4
2.2 Identified Issues in Communication:.....................................................................................5
3. Methodology:...........................................................................................................................6
3.1 Introduction:..........................................................................................................................6
3.2 Method Outline:.....................................................................................................................7
3.3 Research Philosophy:.............................................................................................................7
3.4 Research Approach:...............................................................................................................7
3.5 Research Design:...................................................................................................................8
3.6 Data Collection:.....................................................................................................................8

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1 Introduction:
1.1 Background:
Communication is one of the most important part in the management of the project. The
project management helps in successful completion of any project with the help of proper
planning, scheduling, and implementing the plans as well. Here, the stakeholders plays a
significant role as well. Keeping all of these in mind, it is very important to have a proper
conversation with all the stakeholders involved in the project as well. The communication plays
the mightiest role in this case (Meredith, Mantel and Shafer 2017). Project Management without
proper communication is certainly a nightmare. Effective communication can be one of the
major success factor for the project. As we all know that in order to discuss any matter regarding
the project or stakeholders or anything, communication is the only way.
Communication is often termed as the heart of the project management as throughout the
project the project manager has to communicate with almost all the stakeholders making them
understand various aspects of the projects. The basic process of communication consists mainly
of two entities, and they are sender and the receiver. It is the job of the sender of the message to
code something for the receiver on the other end to decode. In the terms of project management,
there can be numerous coders and decoders of the messages (Kerzner 2017). An effective
communication between the tam and the management can resolve most critical conflicts amongst
the employees of the organization. In order to create a mutual understanding among the people
involved in the project, the communication plays the role of information exchange. With the help
of the communication the client and the company both can be kept informed. A successful
communication can be only established when the message sent by the coder or the sender is well
understood by the receiver.

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1.2 Problem statement:
As we all know that communication is important thus ensuring proper communication is
important as well. It can be said that success of a project is completely dependent upon the
proper communication. Failure in proper communication lead to the failure of project, which
may impact the entire system of revenue for the business. The stakeholders are affected by it
as well along especially the investors who have a considerable amount of fortune invested for
the project. Hence, this topic of research has been selected such that the problems in the
communication system can be identified and the mitigation processes can be obtained.
1.3 Aim, Objective and Research Question:
Aim:
The Aim of the research is to ascertain the communication issues in a project or a project
management such that the techniques can be developed to prevent them from occurring.
Objectives:
 To identify the significance of communication in the purpose of project management.
 To identify the issues of the communication in the project management system.
 To recommend effective solutions for the identified issues in the communication of the
project management.
Research Question:
1. What is the importance of the communication system and communication management in
a project?
2. What are the probable issues due to the communication that can impact the process of
project management?

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3. What are the possible remedies that can be recommended such that the identified
communication issues can be mitigated?
2 Literature Review:
2.1 Importance of Communication in Project:
As mentioned by Tonchia, (2018) for establishment of an effective communication, not
only verbal but also non-verbal body languages are important. There are several reason
which states the prominence of the communication in the project management and they are
explained in the section.
Communication is extremely important for the project manager. As a project manager, it
is his or her duty to look forward towards his employees and stakeholders for the information
regarding the project. The project manager on the other hand keep them updated with the
progress of the project. Thus communication is essential for relaying information.
Eskerod and Jepsen, 2016 agreed to that and mentioned in his research that change is
inevitable in a project. A team or the entire project must be prepared for any such change and
challenges in the projects. In order to implement a proper change management in the project
maintaining and effective communication in the system is essential. Communication plan
helps in planning the project which will help in proper implementation of the strategies of
change management in the project.
Huge issues and conflicts keeps on arising in the project. In order to resolve them,
“discussion” is important. Often fishbone diagram is considered when the problems and
challenges arises in the project. it is baseless to debate upon the significance of
communication in the project management as communication does not only comes in the
form of taking, discussing and conveying messages to one another, it can be conveyed with

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the help of the info graphic, charts, smart arts, comic, pie charts, bar charts and many more.
The appropriate communication is the process by the means of which information can be
passed on (Muszyńska and Marx 2019).
The best project managers are the ones who follows certain communication skills for
their project. Listening, Emphasizing Efficiency over Speed, Asking Questions, Respecting
team. Keeping everyone on the loop are the best ways in which a manger can gain trust of the
stakeholders and deal the project with the effectiveness and efficiency.
2.2 Identified Issues in Communication:
According to Tabassi et al., 2018 all though the communication system that is considered
by the project managers are very effective for the success of the projects, there are certain
issues present in the communication system which causes in hindrances in the project. The
list of such communication issues are given in the section below.
Verbal barrier to the communication: Speaking too fast or slow, or speaking with slangs
are the various reason why communication is a verbal barrier to the project manager. Without
getting what an individual or an employee is trying to convey, proceeding with the project
and measuring its success is almost impossible. The verbal barrier also includes the barrier of
language (Harrison and Lock 2017). With the globalization of the technologies and the
business, the problem of understanding the language is one of the main issues in various
countries. Although English is considered to be the standard of international communication,
each country has their native language in which the people are more comfortable in
conversing with (Tabassi et al. 2018). Thus absence skills for the language is another issue in
the communication in the project management.

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Environmental barrier of the communication is another challenge that is considered.
According to Tonchia (2018) projects are undertaken in such a way that majority of the
clients belongs to the country other than the home country of that company. The conversation
here is mostly telephonic and chat process. Telephonic conversation are often subjected to
the channel noises. Not only that, interferences and cross communication can disrupt the
process of conversation which is one of the major communication issues faced by the
projects dealing with foreign delegates (Niazi et al. 2016).
Misinterpretation of the said or typed words is another challenge faced by the project
management team dealing with numerous people at a time. Some sentences that are said have
multiple meanings. It may happen that whatever is said it is misinterpreted by the other party
giving rise to major conflicts (Tonchia 2018).
With the technologies at its zenith, there are numerous ways in which the messages that
are sent form the sender to the receiver can be distorted. The hacking attacks like the man in
the middle attack can successfully trap a communication network and change the information
without the knowledge of the either of the authentic parties. This leads to major conflicts in
the organizations.in order to avoid that from occurring, certain steps have to be obtained
which is why the research is taken upon. With the help of this research we will be able to find
the techniques in which the issues in the communication system of the project can be
mitigated (Shafiq et al. 2018).
3. Methodology:
3.1 Introduction:
Research methodology is the part of the research which gives us an idea regarding the
techniques which are undertaken for conducting the research. With the appropriate research

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techniques and methodologies, the analysis of the data regarding the topic that is chosen
becomes easier.
3.2 Method Outline:
The research methods used for the process of analyzing the entire data that will be
gathered for conducting the research. The study will help to obtain insights regarding the
issues that will be identified in the research. For performing a thorough analysis of the data
the research philosophy is chosen alongside of the other techniques used for the research like
the collection of the data, approaches for the research, and designs for the research.
3.3 Research Philosophy:
With the help of the research philosophy a deeper knowledge can be gained for the research
topic that is considered. There are mainly three types of research philosophy that is
considered for the purpose of the research and they are Positivism, Interpretivism, and lastly
the Realism. The positivism is the way in which a research is conducted with logical analysis
as well as the application of the research. The second one that is the interpertivism is the
more complicated ways in which the social aspects of the world is analyzed. The realism is
the third one and it has features of the other philosophy. For the purpose of this research we
will take the positivism. The other two philosophies are quite time consuming therefor e they
are discarded. Positivism makes use of the existing theories of researches which is enough
for the collection of the data and clarifying the objectives.
3.4 Research Approach:
In order to conduct the research in a very organized manner research approaches are
followed. This helps the researchers by guiding them towards correct form of research such
that the research objective is fulfilled and the results are obtained with the help of them.

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There are mainly two types of approaches and they are the deductive and the inductive
approaches. Here the research statement and the questions marks the beginning of the
research and the research was dependent on the answers to the research question only. The
inductive research is the research where the theories are developed.
For this research we will consider the deductive research approach which is appropriate
for the topic communication issues in the project management.
3.5 Research Design:
There are three types of research design use ton define a research and they are
explanatory, exploratory and descriptive design for the research. The explanatory research
design helps in summarization of the various process of research which can have
considerable amount of impact on the events of the research. The exploratory research design
is lengthy process which acknowledges all the ideas and thoughts regarding the researches.
The descriptive design is usually used for obtaining the accurate data required for the
researches. For the purpose of the research we have chosen the descriptive design. This is
more focused and help in obtaining the data that is required.
3.6 Data Collection:
This is the procedure of gathering information from the various approaches of research
regarding the topic of the research. The data that is gathered is used for the purpose of the
studying the communication issues in the project management.
There are two different sources of data that is used for the perseverance of the data
collection and they are primary and the secondary source of data. The primary source of the
data is gathered from the surveys and questionnaire from the real people or group of people.
The secondary sources of data are gathered from the sources like books, article and new

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papers, journal and the online sources of the data like blogs. For the purpose of the research
we will choose the primary sources of data with the help of the surveys and questionnaire.
There are two techniques by which the data can be gathered and they are the qualitative
and the quantitative data analysis techniques. The qualitative techniques focuses more on the
quality of the data and it is theoretical approach of gathering the data. The quantitative
approach of the data collection is mostly numerical and gathered from the large sample size
of the data. The accuracy of this technique is much better than the other. For the purpose of
the research we will consider the quantitative data collection techniques.

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References:
Eskerod, P. and Jepsen, A.L., 2016. Project stakeholder management. Routledge.
Harrison, F. and Lock, D., 2017. Advanced project management: a structured approach.
Routledge.
Kerzner, H., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and
controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Meredith, J.R., Mantel Jr, S.J. and Shafer, S.M., 2017. Project management: a managerial
approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Muszyńska, K. and Marx, S., 2019. Communication management practices in international
projects in Polish and German higher education institutions. Procedia Computer Science, 164,
pp.329-336.
Niazi, M., Mahmood, S., Alshayeb, M., Riaz, M.R., Faisal, K., Cerpa, N., Khan, S.U. and
Richardson, I., 2016. Challenges of project management in global software development: A
client-vendor analysis. Information and Software Technology, 80, pp.1-19.
Shafiq, M., Zhang, Q., Akbar, M.A., Khan, A.A., Hussain, S., Amin, F.E., Khan, A. and Soofi,
A.A., 2018. Effect of project management in requirements engineering and requirements change
management processes for global software development. IEEE Access, 6, pp.25747-25763.
Tabassi, A.A., Bryde, D.J., Kamal, E.M. and Dowson, J., 2018. Challenges for project
management in the 21st century.
Tonchia, S., 2018. Project Communication. In Industrial Project Management (pp. 143-152).
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

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