Daniel P.

Gagnon
Excelsior College
IT390

Communication is one of the most important aspects of a project. It is even more

important when dealing with project stakeholders in one or more different geographical
locations. If you cannot obtain a way to communicate and find a common schedule than
the project will most likely fail. One way to help guide communications along is with a
communications plan and every project manager should develop a new one for every
project and not use the same one over and over again.
Conflict Handling Mode
Of the six communications handing the middle ground is usually the way to go
and helps make everyone happy. The modes are based off the type of project. If you have
a really time sensitive project with high visibility you might have to adjust the mode you
use to a more severe level like forcing where ultimatums are given out in order to force
cooperation. Smoothing consists of accommodating the stakeholders on the team in order
to develop better communications. An example would be to set a time when the whole
team would feel comfortable getting together and giving time allow plenty of rest if the
meeting is being done during their off time.
Addressing Communication Issues
As the project manager it is my responsibility to fill in in the gap in the
communications process. Since I am in the smoothing mode I would step in to provide
the communication necessary when a member of the team could not be available during
that time. There are many tools that can be implemented to provide further
communications like emails, video sent over email and there are meeting software that
lets you have an online conference call in real time. These can help along with myself
filling in the gaps should help solve the communications issues.
Communication Plan Enforcement
These additions to the plan will be enforced by logging into the online conference
call and along with email timestamps should provide a way of monitoring the efforts

made by the team and provide accountability to the team member where they will see
who is not participating in the communications. This way it can be handled swiftly and
get the communications to the right people who needs to know.
Monitoring Successful Communications
Monitoring the successful communications will take keeping track of who
attends the conference calls and emails sent along with assessment surveys and company
climate surveys, which are used for finding how your team feels about how the
communications are going, are tools that will make monitoring good communications.

References:
http://www.projectmanagementguru.com/communication.html