Chapter 29. Reporting and Communicating

The project manager is the spokesperson for the project, both formally and informally. It is his responsibility to communicate with all stakeholders, including subordinates, peers, managers, and clients.

Communications management, the application of the concepts of communicating to specific project needs, may be formalized and transformed into a communications management plan (CMP). The CMP may be a standalone document or a part of the software project management plan. But communications on software projects are much more than the formal CMP. Ideas and work products cannot be shared without constant attempts to get into the heads of others. Lacking clairvoyance, we turn to visual and auditory transmission mechanisms. The larger a project team is, the harder it must try to maintain communications—imagine parallel development, concurrent engineering, or a large integration effort without almost constant communication. And informal communications are every bit as important as formal ones.