Communicating

Examples of Meeting Agendas and Status Reports
Recording and communicating project information can be overwhelming -- especially for if people feel like they have to read the collected works of Shakespeare in order to find out the current project status. These examples show how several different real-world project teams managed to communicate important project information like status, meeting notes, and issues without drowning in paperwork. For more examples, check out our Know-How for Requirements and Change Management or Tracking and Control, among others.

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• Action Item List Formats
  Example formats for keeping track of action items that need to be accomplished during a project.
• Words from the VP: Bottom Line Clarity
  How one VP took a stand on an overloaded project list, and communicated priorities with quotable clarity.
• What the Girl Scouts Could Teach Us About Project Communication
  A veteran project manager, a surprisingly effective email, and the five techniques that made it work.
• Improv Your Team
  A game of charades illustrates the need for dynamic, multi-dimensional communication in our teams (starring Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a stick of celery).
  
  Read more articles on managing project communication at the Project Practitioners blog.

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• PM Appointment Letter
  Letter template announcing the appointment of a project manager to a newly-approved project and expressing sponsor support for it.
• Multi-Project Kickoff Meeting Agenda
  Sample agenda for a meeting kicking off several projects at once, to launch a portfolio or orient (or re-orient) a team to their project set, relative priorities, and how it all fits in with business objectives.
• Team Meetings Descriptions Sample
  Check out one team's approach in their meeting-phobic environment; describing their critical "types" meetings in a way that portrays their practicality and value.
• Executive Summary of Project Status/Risks
  An at-a-glance summary that quickly shows execs how the project is doing and what help is needed.
• Lessons Learned Meeting Agenda
  A sample agenda for a lessons learned meeting, to capture what did or didn't go well on a project, how to replicate success, and what to do differently in the future.
• Speaking Truth to Power
  This case study by Randall Englund details how one project manager managed the impossible by creating a compelling picture of the urgent issues, a definite plan to address them, and a clear vision of the final results.

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• Project or Software Release One-Page Summary
  One-page format for communicating key information about a software release (or any other kind of project).
• Sample Team Meeting Agenda
  Sample project team agenda, with emphasis on using objectives and timeslots to keep meetings effective.
• Milestone Table with Driver Tasks
  Formats for a milestone table including the completion dates and the status of major driving tasks for each milestone. The second format also includes a column indicating the completion criteria and success factors for the milestone.
• Project Alternatives Tradeoff Table
  This table gives your team a concise way to document (and communicate!) the alternatives you are considering for scope and features, and the impact of various combinations on the project's cost, schedule, resources, and risk.
• Project Status Reports
  Several different one-page document formats for getting a true picture of a project or portfolio at a glance, and a presentation format for talking to management.
• Project and Pipeline Status Report - 3 page format
  Comprehensive but concise and easily-scanned status report for reporting to management. Includes project summary status, detailed status, and an overall pipeline status dashboard.
• Issue Resolution Status Report
  Format for reporting progress on work to resolve one or more open issues (e.g. project or technical issues).
• Project Scorecard
  This one-page worksheet helps teams define the project finish line in clear, measurable terms. The format encourages measurable goals, go/no-go criteria, long-term progress reports, and active risk mitigation.
• Recommendation Template
  Craft an organized, well documented recommendation to proceed with a given business solution or alternative. It includes all of the key components needed to make an informed decision about whether or not to endorse or approve the recommendation.

• Project Status Reports Bundle
  This bundle provides more than 20 variations on status report formats for different situations, many with sample data so you can see the level of detail other teams and managers use.

Guidelines and Suggestions for Project Communication
Effective communicating includes much more than just infrastructure, like telephone, e-mail, file sharing, and collaboration tools. Effective communication moves information across functional boundaries in a form that creates a common understanding. Use these guidelines to plan good communication into your project from the very beginning. The resources here cover everything from meeting management and communication norms to effective status reporting and infrastructure considerations. You might also want to check out Know How pages on Project Documentation and Tracking and Control.

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• Communication: The Lifeblood of a Project
  More than scheduling, project management is about managing information and communicating it where it's needed.
• Safer Status Emails
  A few minutes spent analyzing your message before you hit Send can save you hours, or days, by avoiding a chaotic aftermath--and have huge implications for your career
• Goal-Driven Communication
  Why am I telling you this? Improving communication by sharing your goals.
• Are you relevant and valued, or just making team members mad?
  Most team members won't think of asking for status reports as "real work."
• Expectation-Setting and Critical Communication with Outside Vendors
  Eight concrete steps you can take to make your vendor engagements easier to manage and more productive.
  
  Read more articles on managing project communication at the Project Practitioners blog.

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• Meeting Minutes Formats
  If you're going to do meeting minutes, make sure they're sharp, concise, and readable.
• Project Escalation Process Guidelines
  Scope issues, major tradeoff decisions, and serious resource conflicts are all examples of situations that can require escalation to higher management.
• Review Meeting Planning Worksheet
  A format to use to plan an upcoming review meeting, to be sure it will accomplish what you need it to.

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• Communication Plan: Status, Meetings, Info Access, and Reviews
  A brief plan created by the project team, documenting how they will communicate important information, including meetings, status reports, etc. The plan covers internal team communications and external stakeholder communications.
• Project Stakeholder/Influencer Assessment and Communication Plan
  Use this assessment form to identify the individuals and groups that may influence your project outcomes -- stakeholders, information sources, even other PMs -- assess their potential impact (for better or worse) and document your plans for how and when to communicate with them.
• Project Kickoff Meeting Agenda and Guidelines
  An example agenda for holding a kickoff meeting for a new project and detailed guidelines for preparing for and running this intense team session.
• Effective Meetings Checklist
  A comprehensive checklist for planning and running effective meetings.
• Change Management Worksheet
  This worksheet helps you plan a strategy for successfully managing your users through the changes caused when your project is finally delivered.
• Team Member Status Report
  Collecting regular team member status reports provides the project manager a window into the true state of the project work. The focus should be on what is needed to complete the project, not a detailed analysis of the team member's every task and movement. This template includes guidelines, sample template, and two examples.
• Brainstorming Meeting Techniques
  Guidelines for facilitating a brainstorming session, covering several types of brainstorming, detailed guidelines for starting off effectively, and pitfalls to watch out for.
• Recording Key Project Decisions
  This file provides several different formats for recording key decisions in various contexts, as well as tips for using features in common project management and collaboration tools to maintain this critical piece of project history.
• Simple Portfolio Status Report
  A useful and effective approach for reporting multi-project, high-level status regularly to executives.
• Project Closeout Meeting Agenda
  This template provides an agenda and instructions for a Close Out Workshop, an occasion where the Program Team and others can document what worked, areas for improvement, lessons learned, and next steps, if any.
  
  Burning Questions:
  As project manager, who am I supposed to communicate with and about what? How do I decide what's needed for a particular project?
  
  Do we really have to have team meetings every week?
  
  Is there a right way to communicate about requirements?
  
  Get answers to more Burning Questions about Project Communication.

• Check out our list of books on communicating.
• Meeting Management Bundle
  The Meeting Management Bundle is a fast path to fundamental techniques and real world tools that will make sure your meetings are effective, attended (!), and even heralded far and wide as the most effective team collaboration time in town.
• Project Kickoff Bundle
  This bundle covers critical inputs to any Project Kickoff, plus tools for getting your team and executives working together quickly and effectively to clarify project goals.
• Project Closeout and "Lessons Learned" Bundle
  This bundle of closeout resources will help you and your team work through everything that's happened, document the results, and share them with everyone who needs to know -- which is usually everyone.
• Communicating Up the Chain to Resolve Big Issues, a mini-course with DeAnna Burghart
  This course explains the importance of issue escalation processes and the many ways they can help your team, beyond just faster issue resolution. 1 PDU
• Staying In Touch and Staying In Sync: Planning Project Communication, a mini-course with DeAnna Burghart
  This course guides you through the process of developing your own project communication plan by focusing on key elements like who, what, when, and how, rather than how many pages of documentation you should generate. 1 PDU

Typical Communication Issues and Answers to Common Questions
You need to keep your team armed with the information they need, without drowning them in excess detail or starving them of important facts. You need to make the precious time spent on meetings, presentations, and reviews more effective. You need to resolve conflicts without dissolving the team or losing valuable experience. These resources will help. You might also want to check out Know How pages on Conflict and Issue Management, Team Building and Virtual Teams.

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• Being Heard Above the Communication Blizzard
  Are your key project communications getting lost in the avalanche? Try these suggestions for climbing out of the drift.
• Being "Relevant" As Managers
  Technical teams perform better when management processes are made relevant to them.
• Reframe for Clarity
  Let me understand this… Inserting a small dose of reality in your project communications.
• Manage Your Communications
  Your favorite communication style may not be the best one for your audience, or your message.
  
  Read more articles on managing project communication at the Project Practitioners blog.

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• Meeting Evaluation Guidelines
  A simple evaluation questionnaire and process helps evaluate meeting effectiveness and suggest goals for improvement. Two formats accommodate formal or informal meeting environments.
• Best Practices from Experiences in Facilitating Virtual Meetings
  This paper identifies the lessons learned from facilitating over 100 virtual meetings for the U.S. Navy, ranging from idea-generation and planning to status briefings and collaborative writing, and almost everything in between.
• Tools for Teams: Beyond the Email Bottleneck
  The spec you're supposed to review has gone missing; there are three different versions of the project plan floating around and the remote team doesn't have any of them. Clearly, email is not enough. It's time to take the tools management process seriously.
• Guidelines: Personality Types Impact on Team Interactions
  A guideline explaining how an understanding of the "personality types" of your team members can be useful for avoiding conflict and promoting effective collaboration among your team members, who may differ in the way they perceive and organize information, communicate, and make decisions.
• Getting Relevant to Get Results
  Project management tools and talk can leave technical contributors bored, resistant, or outright rebellious. Are project managers and technical team members hopelessly far apart? Or do we just have a language and perspective problem?
• A User's Guide to Working with Me
  Do you know what makes your team tick? Could they say the same? This quick chart helps team members communicate their most effective modes of work, including hot buttons, trust-builders, the best ways to raise and resolve conflicts, and more.

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• Establishing Meeting Ground Rules
  Guidelines, examples, and a checklist of suggestions for establishing ground rules for meeting behavior.
• Speaking Up – How to Make Your Case
  This guideline can help you make your case more effectively when you see ways your team could improve the project or work together better.
• Preventing and Solving Meeting Disruptions
  Suggestions for handling those "impossible" people who continually disrupt, derail, and detract from meetings.
• Daily Hot-List Meetings
  Instill and reinforce a sense of urgency in your team with fast, productive daily meetings that keep everyone in sync without sinking anyone's time.
• Agile Technique Guideline: Standup Meetings
  This guideline explains how to use one common agile technique -- standup meetings -- to get team members into the habit of keeping each other in the loop without spending hours every week in endless, agonizing status meetings.
• Agile Technique Guideline: Information Radiators
  Information Radiators, also known as Big Visible Charts, are useful quite simply because they provide an effective way to communicate project status, issues, or metrics without a great deal of effort from the team.
• Technique Brief - Context Diagrams
  Simple sketches can aid discussions of project features and scope, and detailed graphical interface specifications can improve communication and understanding with non-technical stakeholders.
  
  Burning Questions:
  I need help delivering bad news without getting blamed for it.
  
  How can I get people to come to the meetings?
  
  Are all these detailed status reports really necessary? Is there any way I can get out of them?
  
  Read more Problem-Solvers for Project Communication.

• Check out our list of books on communicating.
• Speaking Up! Influence Skills for Getting What You Need, a mini-course with DeAnna Burghart
  This short course and related guideline will help you bolster confidence and develop the most effective case possible in every venue available to you, by learning what motivates people to help and how to build an effective and succinct case. 1 PDU
• Tracking and Managing the Performance of Virtual Teams, a mini-course with Cinda Voegtli
  No matter where your team members are located or who they report to, there are several easy forms of tracking and communication you can use ensure that the right work is getting done at the right time. With the techniques and examples discussed in this session, you can be confident of where your project really stands. 1 PDU
• It's So NOT About Authority: Critical Influence Skills for PMs
  In this 90-minute session, ProjectConnections founder Cinda Voegtli explains how to identify your current influence shortfalls and do something about them fast. 1.5 PDUs