Overview |  | Roles |  | Work Items |  | Views |  | CMMI |  | Index |  | Glossary |

Project Portal
| See Also Communication Plan Template |
| ### Next Steps Review Project Plan |
| Define Project Communication Plan ( 3 : IPM : 4 : 4.3 ) ( 3 : IT : 2 : 2.5 ) Project Manager
Activity: Define Project Communication Plan
Project Manager
|  |  |  | Planning |  |
|  | Participating Roles Responsible: Project Manager Accountable: Project Manager Consult: Any Informed: All
### Overview A communication plan documents the proposed and agreed upon paths and mechanisms of communication across a project. Everyone on the project should be aware of how to communicate across the project and externally to the wider organization. Communication is a big overhead and can be a big drain on productivity. Hence, it is important to put focus on developing a good communication plan and practicing the discipline of following it. # Entry Criteria Project Organization Chart The organization chart showing team members roles and responsibilities. # Sub-Activities
1 | Define Paths of Communication | Detail who communicates with whom on the project. Focus on eliminating project flow noise from the team members actually generating value such as developers, testers, user experience architects, and user education specialists. As much as possible, these team members should be free to work. Within work groups, team members should be free to communicate amongst themselves. This optimizes their ability to get work done. Across work groups and external to the project, communications should be channeled. This is typically done through work group leaders such as lead developers and through roles responsible for project flow such as project managers.
2 | Define Means of Communication | For each channel of communication, define the acceptable means of communication; such as face-to-face, instant messaging, e-mail, teleconference, video conference, net meeting, written document for review, or feedback. Inappropriate means of communication on a defined channel should be flagged as a risk or an issue. For example, if it were decided that all design should be done through a face-to-face meeting, then design which happened through an e-mail thread because team members could not schedule time together would be considered a risk to the project and an issue for resolution.
3 | Publish Communication Plan | Publish the communication plan to the project portal.
# Exit Criteria
| A plan for communications across the project team.
© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. MSF for CMMI Process Improvement: 1.00.0000.00 |