Table of Contents
The communications plan is a very important document in the implementation process. With a proper communications plan, the implementation process will be easier and much more fruitful for it will be carried out strategically.
Stakeholders
The key stakeholders of the company that will have interest in the implementation of the project include the company’s chief executive officer, the chief financial officer, the chief operations officer, sales and advertising director, human resource director, system administrator and the information technology director. Notably, all these persons have a major interest in the implementation since it will affect their decision-making process. As such, their final word on the project will be critical. They should be allowed to either approve or disapprove the implementation based on their perception of whether the project will meet their goals and needs or not.
Communication Plan
It is important that the progress of the project be communicated to the stakeholders. The communication should be strategic in a way that will facilitate smooth communication of the progress. With a proper communication plan, different issues will be sorted out. For instance, the communication plan will facilitate the collection of information from the different persons involved in the project. It will also facilitate proper decision making since the information will be developed (Schwalbe, 2015). The exchange will also be facilitated as well as the projection of governance and information relay to the project stakeholders to facilitate their commitment to the cause. The content of the communications will include product and process information. The product information will include information on the scope, level of quality, and the projects’ benefits to the stakeholders. On the other hand, the process information will include information on the size, timing, internal risks, as well as other important information.
Form of Communication
The communication process will involve the communication of the project progress to the stakeholders in different forms. The stakeholders will be issued with status reports that will be issued periodically. The timing or the periodicity of the communications will depend on the type of communication. There are three specific timings that will be put into consideration. These are the initial communication, the recurring communications and the close-out communication (Lock, 2014). The initial communication will be constructed to inspire the stakeholders. This is the initial communication that is made when the project is starting. The communication will include information on the scope of the project, project team, etc. The details of the project regarding how much time it is expected to last as well as the resources that will be used should also be contained in the communication.
The recurring communications are to be done often on a periodic manner depending on the need to communicate to the stakeholders. The project team will carry out these communications at their discretion. At times these communications will be demand-driven. These communications will also include all the documentations of the project which the project team will leave with the organization. These documentations include the system administrations instructions and troubleshooting procedures among other important instructions. The final mode of communication is the close-out communication. The close-out communication will be done at the closure of the project. This is the final communication. It will detail the closure of the project. This is an important communication for it will bring closure to the project implementation process.
Action Preferences
There will be different forms of communications that will be conveyed based on different timings. Communication soliciting for certain actions or informing of certain possibilities will be based on information types. For example, there will be communication on the project risks and threats. Such communication will be done before the threats have occurred or have been experienced. The action to be undertaken could prevent the issue from taking place. For instance, there might be a threat of loss of data and information when the data is being migrated to the new database. In such case, the actions that could be recommended and taken could prevent such a loss.
Communication on the issues that are being experienced as the systems are being installed and integrated should also be reported (Stark, 2015). The communications on issues will be done randomly based on what has come up. There will not be any specific schedule for such communications. However, when it comes to the communications on the progress of the implementation, reports will be issued on a daily basis. There will also be some weekly communications which will serve as overall reports of the development and activities that have been undertaken during the week.
Documentation
The initial communications will be done in the form of formal reports. There will be some that will be in the form of discussions. The initial communications will also include documentation on the initiative authorization, the initial and the high-level plan. Stakeholder expectations will also be communicated. The initial communications will also include the minutes of the bidder’s meeting documenting the details of the bidding process. The contract award for the project will also be included in the communication. All these communications will be sent via email. Where original documents or almost similar representations need to be communicated, such as the awarded contract, the documents will be sent as scanned images. The emails will be communicated to the stakeholders. More importantly, there will be some sessions where physical meetings will be held. In such cases, the notice of the meeting’s venue and time will be communicated via emails as well as via memos to all the concerned parties.
In support of the future operations of the system, several communications will be made. Firstly, the manual for the operation of the system will be communicated. This will be in the form of an electronic copy a well as a manual printout. This particular documentation will detail how the system should be managed and how the administration process should be undertaken. More so, steps on how to carry out maintenance of the system will also be included in the communication. Instructions on how to expand and upgrade the system will also be included therein. These details will be included in the technical documentation. The user documentation will include information on how the users can operate the system. For instance there will be information on how to change the user password and how to manage one’s personal account.
Change Control Process
The change control process will detail how changes are undertaken in the project. This process will ensure that the changes are undertaken strategically. There will be five stages in the control process. The first sage is the proposal stage where the changes are proposed. The project implementation process will allow for recommendations to be made on possible changes that will better the project. The proposals that are given should detail the expected benefits of carrying out the changes on the project. The second stage is the summary stage. At this stage, the summary of the impact of the proposed change will be detailed. The impact will be quantified regarding the costs, benefits and savings. The estimated costs due to the proposed changes will also be detailed herein.
The third stage of the change control process is the decision stage. Here, the proposal will be reviewed and a decision made on whether to incorporate the changes or not. At this stage, the decisions made will be either to accept the changes, accept with special conditions, reject, or defer the proposed changes. The fourth stage will be the implementation stage. Implementation of the proposed changes will be undertaken according to the plan and as per the schedule. Finally, the change process will be closed.
Outsourcing Implementation Tasks
Implementation tasks will be outsourced. The application of consulting services will come in handy since the project is not within the technical skills of the IT department as it is currently composed. As such, this is a necessary step. The challenge in this case would be the communication of the company’s needs and goals to the consultants. In some cases, it has been noted that such consulting services have not worked out well due to miscommunication between the stakeholders and the consultants (Dreesen et al., 2016). Nonetheless, there are certain benefits that are associated with such services.
When the company outsources the project implementation services, the consultations services are likely to be a nit costly, nonetheless, since it will be professionals that will be dealing with the project, chances are high that the process will be done professionally and chances of failure will be minimal (Liu & Yuliani, 2016). If the company was to perform these tasks in house, it would reduce the initial implementation costs. However, chances would be high that the project would fail and some things would be overlooked since the personnel dealing with the project would be unprofessional and without the necessary experience.
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- Liu, J. Y. C., & Yuliani, A. R. (2016). Differences Between Clients’ and Vendors’ Perceptions of IT Outsourcing Risks: Project Partnering as the Mitigation Approach. Project Management Journal, 47(1), 45-58.
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- Schwalbe, K. (2015). Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.
- Stark, J. (2015). Product lifecycle management. In Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 1) (pp. 1-29). Springer International Publishing.