Communication projects: Definition, challenges and best practices
Blog: Monday Project Management Blog
As more companies opt into long-term remote work, effective communication projects are more important than ever. In this new environment, your communication projects can’t rely on a set-it-and-forget-it approach.
Your communication projects need to be proactive, comprehensive, and collaborative to be successful.
However, designing or revamping communication projects can feel daunting.
That’s why we’re here to show you five best practices to successfully manage communication projects.
What are communication projects?
Before we dive into the top best practices for communication projects, here’s a quick definition of what communication projects are.
As the name depicts, communication projects are projects focused on communication. Examples of communication projects include internal comms projects, marcomms projects, and business communication projects.
In practice, communication can be shared in various forms (verbal, written, and digital), within teams and company-wide. Effective communication projects help team members work more effectively together.
Managing a communication project is an ongoing exercise in collaboration. They require prioritization, frequent check-ins, and collaboration across your business.
“Communication Projects” is a part of our Project Management Glossary — check out the full list of terms and definitions.
Key challenges with communication projects
Common challenges include:
Outdated communication approaches
Some businesses still use outdated communication methods. For example, maybe employees still insist on sharing important information on an old intranet that no one else reads. Upgrading your communication approach can help ensure everyone is aligned and on board.
Information or knowledge silos
Managing a team that is widely spread out can be a challenge with communication projects. Keeping your team regularly updated and on the same page will ensure knowledge is shared, not siloed. Each team member will know what’s going on, what they need to do, and what everyone is working towards.
Information overload
It can be easy to get overloaded with too much information. As always, you’ve got to adapt the message to the receiver. By just dumping information, you risk that it isn’t read at all. Try breaking down your communication project into manageable chunks instead.
Lack of tools/technology
The right technology can make or break your communication projects. We have a growing and widely distributed team at monday.com, but it’s never been a challenge for us to keep track of communication projects, because we have everything under control with monday.com.
Let’s now dive into the top best practices for managing communication projects.
5 best practices for managing communication projects
Communication projects only succeed if you have an effective strategy. Here are some best practice tips to keep everyone on track and working towards the same goal.
- Assess your current approach: You likely already have some processes in place, so it’s time to assess what’s working and what isn’t.
- Maintain communication consistency with remote and hybrid teams: Hybrid and remote workers often miss out if workers in the office have impromptu meetings without sending a summary to relevant team members. That’s why it’s important that all workers have the right tools and technology for effective communication workflows.
- Find alternatives to email wherever possible: According to McKinsey, employees spent 28% of their average work week reading and answering emails. Instead of adding to the list of messages, consider a different approach.
- Encourage knowledge sharing among employees: Previously, you might have heard about project updates in a shared lunch area. Now, these casual touchpoints are hard to come by. To stay informed across the business you need to get creative and collaborative.
- Identify your communication project tools: If you don’t have the project management tools in place to support your communication projects, now is the time to act.
Let’s look at how you might put this to work.
Managing communication projects with monday.com
Using monday.com’s Work OS to monitor your communication projects helps you streamline your workflows.
Communication projects can vary from small things to large scale projects. This is where monday.com’s library of templates may come in handy.
Consider starting with our communications project template. You can also create Gantt charts.
Managing communication projects on monday.com will ensure increased transparency and easier collaboration across your entire organization, no matter how big or how small.
Frequently asked questions
Here you can find the most commonly asked communication project questions to quickly get the answers you need.
What are communication project skills?
Communication is essential to successful project management because it forms the foundations of setting clear objectives, collaboration, feedback and more. Types of communication skills include active listening (checking that a message is understood), non-verbal communication (body language) and culture (being open-minded and encouraging towards new ideas).
Why are communication projects important?
Essentially, communication projects act as the roadmap for sharing information. The project defines what, who, when and how information will be shared — whether that’s across internal channels like email or external channels like social media — as well as how this communication will be tracked (for example views and clicks). What you say and how you say it is key to getting people onboard and working towards the same actions and goals.
What is a communication project tool?
Communication project tools help in a number of ways. For example, they help to map and automate communications so that the right people receive them and at the right time, so that people aren’t bombarded with too many messages and crucially it helps prevent sensitive information going to the wrong person. A good example of a communication project tool is monday.com.
Bring your communication projects to life with monday.com
As you can see, communication projects have a lot of moving parts. But with the right strategy, tools, and technology you can efficiently and effectively manage them.
Final tips for how monday.com can help with communication projects:
- Bring together your team and conversations about your communication projects using Boards to avoid digging through long email threads.
- Every communication project can be scheduled on the Dashboard. You can then stay on top of your schedule and know what’s coming up with calendar views.
- Know who’s working on what, and get notified of tasks moving from one stage to another.
Remember to break down your project into manageable chunks, and aim to manage everything in one place. You’ll soon start to see your communication projects come to life.
The post Communication projects: Definition, challenges and best practices appeared first on monday.com Blog.
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
