MONITORING AND CONTROL STAGE (COMMUNICATIONS) : CONTROL COMMUNICATIONS

This is the process of monitoring and controlling the communications throughout the project to ensure that the project information meets according to the project stakeholders’ needs, i.e. the right message is delivered to the right audience at the right time by the right method.

The inputs are:

• Project management plan that describes how the project information will be generated, communicated, monitored and controlled. The information can be stakeholders’ requirements, reasons for the distribution of the project information, frequency and timeframe for the distribution of the project information, individual (s) responsible for distributing and receiving the project information etc
• Project communications with different formats, level of details and degree of confidentiality delivered from different sources of information.
• Issue log that documents all the issues of the project and communicated to the stakeholders in order to ensure a common understanding of those issues and who is responsible to resolve what issue.
• Organizational process assets such as report templates, communication technology available, allowed communication media, policy, guidelines and standards that define communications etc

Control communication process can be done by:

• Using information management systems that generate, store and distribute project information to the stakeholders about the progress of the project
• Using experts who can assess the impact of project communications. They can also agree the actions to be taken, when and who will be responsible for taking such actions.
• Meeting with the project team to discuss the most appropriate ways to communicate the project performance. The meetings can be facilitated through online or face to face with suppliers, vendors, clients and other stakeholders.

The outputs of this process are:

• Work performance information that provides the status and progress information on the project at the certain level of detail to be communicated to stakeholders according to their requirements.
• Change requests if there is a need of making some adjustment, improvement, action or intervention in project communications management
• Updates in project management plan particularly in project communications plan and other components, project documents such as issue log and performance report and organizational process assets such as reports templates and lessons learnt documentation.

References:

PMI (2013). A Guide to the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide 5^th Ed.) USA, Project Management Institute

https://www.pm-primer.com/control-communications-2/