Swinburne University: Communication in IT Project Management Report

This report, prepared for INF30029 at Swinburne University, analyzes the critical role of communication in IT project management. It emphasizes the importance of clear and efficient communication for project success, covering key aspects such as passing on information, problem-solving, and planning. The report explores various communication tools and approaches, including regular meetings, transparency, and respect among team members. It also details how to manage communication effectively by developing project structures, identifying participants, defining roles, creating communication plans, and generating status reports. The literature review synthesizes research from various sources, including journals and books, to provide a comprehensive understanding of communication strategies in IT project management and offers insights into keeping project teams engaged and informed. The report concludes by summarizing the key strategies for successful communication management throughout the project lifecycle.

COMMUNICATION IN IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT 1
IT Project Management.
Student’s name
Name of institution
Course
Date

COMMUNICATION IN IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT 2
Table of content.
Contents
Summary.....................................................................................................................................................3
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................4
Role of communication in managing projects.............................................................................................4
Passing on information............................................................................................................................4
Discoursing problems..............................................................................................................................5
Planning and organizing..........................................................................................................................5
How to manage communication.................................................................................................................5
Communication tools and approaches needed to keep a project team engaged and informed
adequately...................................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................9
References.................................................................................................................................................11

COMMUNICATION IN IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT 3
Summary.
For any project to be successful, there must be excellent communication, managers must
keep their team members well informed on project related issues with all the necessary
information they require to do the activities assigned to them, the information communicated
should be easy to understand and direct. Excellent communication helps in passing on
information, solving problems, and organizing projects. Managers are required to effectively
manage communication during the project period, they can achieve this through; developing a
project structure, identifying all participants, ensuring that all team members clearly understand
their role and responsibilities, developing a good communication plan and making project-status-
reports. Mangers are expected to keep their employees informed, they can do so by having
frequent meetings with their team members, involving all team members in operations of the
project, maintaining transparency, ensuring that all team members respect each other and accept
corrections made by other team members.

COMMUNICATION IN IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT 4
Introduction.
Excellent and efficient communication has a significant part in successful project
management, project management involves components which includes: quality, time, cost, risk
management among many others, nevertheless without proper communication, the project can
never be successful. There are different means of communication that are used by most, these are
:emails, discussions, meetings, phone calls, or any other method that help managers to acquire
relevant information. Managers should ensure that they communicated the agenda, meeting notes
and anticipated the result of any meeting to all the team members before the meeting date, this is
to ensure that the meeting is productive and takes the shortest duration possible. Asking of
questions is the most dynamic communication tool, managers should ask questions concerning
the status of the project, the progress and other issues concerning the project. This will help
detect any possible threat and react appropriately in good time, and it is also helpful in making
the right decisions as well as finding out if the project is working towards achieving its goals. A
good communication policy should be created before the project is initiated and shared to the
participants (Butt, Naaranoja and Savolainen 2016).
Role of communication in managing projects
Passing on information
Administrators should make sure that all team members are updated about the project’s
aims, the activities they are expected to complete, the time duration for completing specific
tasks, responsibilities and the procedures to be followed. Team members ought to report to the
administrators about the progress of the project, any challenges that they might be facing in the
process of working, any risk they detect and to make amplifications and enquires. Stakeholders

COMMUNICATION IN IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT 5
may also need to get information concerning the possible risks, progress, and problems faced.
Excellent communication prevents misperception and project failures (Muhammad 2018)
Discoursing problems.
Effective communication is also very crucial in solving problems, once a problem is
identified, the team members have to inform the manager immediately, they all discuss the issue,
suggest solutions and come up with the most appropriate solution to the problem. The problem
can only be solved if all participants come together intending to stop the problem, they converse
about the issue, give suggestions on how to deal with the issue and finally agree on a standard
solution (Henderson, Stackman and Lindekilde 2016).
Planning and organizing.
Planning involves assigning duties and responsibilities to team members, setting goals
and objectives to be achieved for the success of a particular project, distributing funds to the
specific activities and setting the duration in which each operation should be completed. For that
reason the manager has to communicate to all participants on matters regarding the planning
process, he/she has to clearly inform the team members about their assigned duties and the
expected outcome as well as the time duration in which they ought to have completed specific
tasks, they have to get funds from the creditors and therefore must adequately convince them on
the suitability of their project, managers are also expected to inform the directors on the plans,
processes, and progress of the project (Karuppiah, Marthandan and Shanmugam 2018).
How to manage communication.
Communication management consists of getting particular information in the course of the
project process, evaluating and giving it to the people who require that specific information in

COMMUNICATION IN IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT 6
good time and following the right procedures (Muller 2017). To manage communication
effectively, managers can do the following.
1. Develop a project structure.
Before initiating any project, it is essential to lay out a good project plan and inform all
the team members. This can be attained through many different ways, describing the work
streams helps all stakeholders to work together throughout the project. The project structure
should be communicated to all people involved in the project and control the organization to
create communication plans as well as work-breakdown-structure that can be used as a
working plan for the project. The project structure can be defined by different tools including
information technology architecture documents, business processes, and business data, and
these tools are used in identifying the connection amongst business data, technology, and
process (Meng and Boyd 2017)
2. Identify all the participants.
This involves examining and questioning all people connected to the business and setting
the limit by categorizing as follows: who your customers are and how they are affected by
the project, all the departments that are affected by the business operations, which technology
is being used and which department has that kind of technology and also identify other
projects that could be affected by your plan. After finding out all affected areas, you should
give the information you have to the team members (Tonchia 2018)
3. Make sure that team members clearly understand their roles & responsibilities.
To have an excellent interpersonal relationship in the organization, managers have to
accurately communicate the roles and expectations they have to the team. They have to make

COMMUNICATION IN IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT 7
specific responsibilities for all the participants, including the directors, managers, and
members of the group. Project managers can use the RACI matrix to effectively develop
roles for each person involved in the project to make sure that they are responsible,
accountable, consulted and informed on the progress and all critical issues concerning the
project processes (Yeomans and FitzPatrick 2017)
4. Develop a communication plan.
Managers are expected to develop different plans of communication depending on the
kind of project they are having, the must put into consideration what need to be known, who
needs to know it, at what time do they need to know it and how they will know it. The plan
should enable effective communication to all participants of the project; suitable training on
the subject of communication forms to be used should be done to ensure smooth running
during the process. The plan should also contain time limits of each activity (Quirke 2017)
5. Make project status reports.
The status reports are the principal vehicle of communication when preparing a
status report for the project, and you should be precise and straight to the point avoiding
to avoid inappropriate information. Articulate the problems and the plans you are having
to get the project back to the right track, give the meanings of all acronyms used, avoid
vocabularies and address people by their office titles instead of their names (Ruck 2015).

COMMUNICATION IN IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT 8
Communication tools and approaches needed to keep a
project team engaged and informed adequately.
Excellent communication facilitates the success of a project. A manager has to
communicate to all his team members efficiently, he/she has to make a working schedule,
decide of which form of communication will be used and the make sure it is the right
information being communicated. They must as well identify who needs the data, at what
time the information is required and the way of communicating (Tench, Verčič, Zerfass,
Moreno and Verhoeven 2017). The manager can choose some of the following approaches to
keep the team informed adequately:
1) Regular meetings.
Have meeting frequently with the team members and allow each member to give opinions
concerning the project’s activities, changes they think should be done or any other issue
concerning the accomplishment of the project. During this meetings, discuss only relevant
matters, ensure you save time by sending the meeting's agenda to all team members before the
meeting and request them to be ready to discuss the schedules during the session.
2) Be all-inclusive.
Invite all participants that ought to attend a particular meeting, and if you are uncertain of the
need of some specific people being invited to the reception or getting updates of the project's
development, you should always invitee them. Don’t limit yourself to getting information from a
small group of people. Instead, you would rather acquire as much information as possible from a
wide range of people. Ask your team members the mode of communication they would prefer at
the beginning of the project.
3) Maintain transparency.

COMMUNICATION IN IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT 9
When communicating to all participants, managers ought to be clear and straight forward,
and the manager should understand the reason for the communication, the people to be informed
to, the expectations, the best way of communicating and if they will require to refer to the
discussion in future. Managers should try relating most easily and appropriately possible and to
all people involved (Lewis 2019).
4) Embrace respect.
To have good interpersonal relationships within the organization, every person must show
some respect to colleagues irrespective of their position. Executives and administrators should
respect other team members as much as they expect to be recognized in return. Team members
have to appreciate each other’s opinions and differences to maintain a strong team.
5) Accept corrections.
Irrespective of the power you have, you must accept that you may go wrong in some case,
you must accept the corrections made by colleges, by doing so, you keep your team members
motivated, and they feel appreciated. If your ego is too high to accept corrections, other members
will eventually stop correcting you, which leads to inefficient and ineffective work
performances, which may cause project failure. Projects cannot be successful if there is no
proper communication across the team members, and therefore, managers and directors should
check their pride while communicating to maintain a good relationship (Chatterjee and Kozar
2019).

COMMUNICATION IN IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT 10
Conclusion.
In conclusion, managers have to manage communication throughout the project period
properly, they can achieve this through; developing a project structure, identifying all
participants, ensuring that all team members clearly understand their role and responsibilities,
developing a good communication plan and making project-status-reports. Managers are also
responsible for keeping their team members engaged and informed. They can achieve that
through having frequent meetings with their team members, involving all team members in
operations of the project, maintaining transparency, ensuring that all team members respect each
other and accept corrections made by other team members.

COMMUNICATION IN IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT 11
References
Butt, A., Naaranoja, M. and Savolainen, J., 2016. Project change stakeholder communication.
International Journal of Project Management, 34(8), pp.1579-1595.
Chatterjee, K. and Kozar, P., 2019. How Inter-Disciplinary Group Members Manage
Communication Challenges When Providing Hospice Care: An Application of Problematic
Integration Theory. Health communication, pp.1-12.
Henderson, L.S., Stackman, R.W. and Lindekilde, R., 2016. The centrality of communication
norm alignment, role clarity, and trust in global project teams. International Journal of Project
Management, 34(8), pp.1717-1730.
Karuppiah, S.D., Marthandan, G. and Shanmugam, M., 2018. An explanatory investigation on
the role of communication antecedents in project management. Journal of Theoretical and
Applied Information Technology, 96(23), pp.7904-7916.
Lewis, L., 2019. Organizational change: Creating change through strategic communication.
Wiley-Blackwell.
Meng, X. and Boyd, P., 2017. The role of the project manager in relationship management.
IntJiang, J., Klein, G. and Fernandez, W., 2018. From project management to program
management: an invitation to investigate programs where IT plays a significant role. Journal of
the Association for Information Systems, 19(1), pp.40-57.ernational Journal of Project
Management, 35(5), pp.717-728.
Muhammad, A., 2018. Role of Project Management Maturity on Organizational Performance
with mediating role of Organizational Culture in Pakistan (Doctoral dissertation).
Muller, R., 2017. Project governance. Routledge.
Quirke, B., 2017. Making the connections: using internal communication to turn strategy into
action. Routledge.
Ruck, M.K. ed., 2015. Exploring internal communication: Towards informed employee voice.
Gower Publishing, Ltd.

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Ruck, M.K. ed., 2015.. The value of communication in turbulent environments: how SMEs
manage change successfully in unstable surroundings. International Journal of Entrepreneurship
and Small Business, 34(4), pp.500-515.
Tench, R., Verčič, D., Zerfass, A., Moreno, Á. and Verhoeven, P., 2017. Communication
excellence: How to develop, manage and lead exceptional communications. Springer.
Tonchia, S., 2018. Project Communication. In Industrial Project Management (pp. 143-152).
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Yeomans, L. and FitzPatrick, L., 2017. Internal communication.