Communication and Meeting Management

Date: Dec 24, 2023

In this sample chapter from CompTIA Project+ PK0-005 Cert Guide, 2nd Edition, you will learn various communication factors and modes, common challenges to team communication, and the purposes of meeting-specific roles. This chapter covers the following objectives for the CompTIA Project+ exam: (1.8) Compare and contrast communication management concepts and (1.9) Given a scenario, apply effective meeting management techniques.

This chapter covers the following topics:

Assess Methods of Communication: Understanding synchronous and asynchronous, written and verbal, formal and informal, and external and internal communication
Develop Communication Platforms/Modalities: Considering communication types (status updates, issues, and so on), methods/platforms (email and dashboards), and recipients (project manager, team lead, and team member)
Manage Project Communication: Overcoming communication challenges, language barriers, time zones/geographical factors, technological factors, and cultural differences, maintaining the integrity and security of communication records, and archiving
Control Project Communication: Escalating communication issues and revising the communication plan
Meeting Roles: Understanding facilitators, scribes, and attendees/target audiences
Meeting Tools: Understanding the benefits of agenda setting/publishing, timeboxing, action items, meeting minutes, and follow-ups
Meeting Types: Includes collaborative meetings (workshops, focus groups, joint application development/joint application review sessions, and brainstorming), informative meetings (demonstrations/presentations, stand-ups, and status meetings), and decisive meetings (refinement, task setting, and project steering committee meetings)

Communication is the lifeblood of project work; in fact, Project Management Institute (PMI) has estimated that project managers spend 90% of their working time in communication. For this reason, the ability to facilitate effective, efficient communication is one of the most important skills the project manager can have. In addition, communication technologies must be chosen carefully based on the needs of the stakeholders. Factors that can affect the choice of a communication technology include how urgently the information is needed, the availability of a communication technology, its ease of use, the project environment, and the sensitivity or confidentiality of the information.

Communication is formally governed by the communication plan, the escalation plan, the stakeholder engagement plan, and the records management plan. Because CompTIA considers communication development a crucial part of project planning, these plans are covered in Chapter 9, “Project Life Cycles, Discovery/Concept Preparation Phase, and Initiating Phase Activities,” and Chapter 10, “Planning Phase Activities.” For the purposes of this chapter, you only need to know that the communication plan lists the tempo, format, and channels for distributing project information throughout the project’s Executing and Closing phases. The project manager is responsible for knowing when and how involved parties should be kept in the loop and how records should be maintained.

This chapter also covers the various communication factors and modes, common challenges to team communication, and the purposes of meeting-specific roles. Finally, it discusses the three main categories of project meetings, their target audiences, and their intended outcomes and purposes.

This chapter covers the following objectives for the CompTIA Project+ exam:

1.8 Compare and contrast communication management concepts.
1.9 Given a scenario, apply effective meeting management techniques.

“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz

The “Do I Know This Already?” quiz allows you to assess whether you should read this entire chapter thoroughly or jump to the “Exam Preparation Tasks” section. If you are in doubt about your answers to these questions or your own assessment of your knowledge of the topics, read the entire chapter. Table 7-1 lists the major headings in this chapter and their corresponding “Do I Know This Already?” quiz questions. You can find the answers in Appendix A, “Answers to the ‘Do I Know This Already?’ Questions and Review Quizzes.”

Table 7-1 “Do I Know This Already?” Section-to-Question Mapping

Foundation Topics Section	Questions
Assess Methods of Communication	1–2
Develop Communication Platforms/Modalities	3
Manage Project Communication	4–6
Control Project Communication	7
Meeting Roles	8
Meeting Tools	9
Meeting Types	10–11

What is considered the most effective method of communication?
1. Written communication
2. Formal communication
3. Nonverbal communication
4. Face-to-face communication
You are hired to take over an active project. Based on the previous project manager’s notes, you are concerned about conflict between two team members. What is the best method of determining whether the team members can successfully communicate without impeding project work?
1. Hold separate face-to-face meetings with each of the team members.
2. Hold a single face-to-face meeting with both team members.
3. Send an email to each of the team members.
4. Hold a single virtual meeting with both team members.
5. Carefully observe how the team members interact during meetings.
Which tasks would a project manager perform when developing communication platforms for the project? (Choose all that apply.)
1. Purchase a new enterprise license for a chat application.
2. Establish internal communication accounts for external contractors.
3. Tailor the platform to the needs of the project.
4. Secure the credentials for the social media account used for project communication.
All members of a virtual project team speak the same language but live in various areas around the world. What are the two most likely communication issues the team will need to address?
1. Language barriers and cultural differences
2. Geographical factors and cultural differences
3. Language barriers and geographical factors
4. Geographical factors and personal preferences
A project manager is struggling to find an acceptable time for international team members to have a video conference. Scheduling the meeting at 1:00 p.m. EST might allow London team members to join (6:00 p.m. GMT) but would exclude New Delhi team members by falling at 11:30 p.m. IST. Which communication challenge must be resolved?
1. Cultural differences
2. Technological factors
3. Geographical factors
4. Time zone factors
The application your project is designing will have several proprietary features that must be protected. A stakeholder has requested access to a report that includes confidential development information, but they are not approved to receive it. What should you do?
1. Consult with the project sponsor to verify that the stakeholder needs the information.
2. Deny the stakeholder’s request.
3. Grant the stakeholder access and note the change in the communication plan.
4. Give the stakeholder a redacted copy of the report, removing the confidential data.
A business analyst frequently drops by your team member’s office to convey the customer’s questions about the project. As a result, the team member stops work and spends time researching answers that she does not immediately have. What would help her stay on task with fewer interruptions? (Choose two.)
1. Timeboxing
2. Escalation plan
3. Communication plan
4. Stakeholder engagement plan
Which project document or artifact is created by the meeting’s scribe?
1. Meeting agenda
2. Meeting minutes
3. Printed media
4. Status report
Some speakers linger too long over their topics in the weekly status meeting and do not leave enough time for the final Q&A session. What would ensure the full agenda is covered in a meeting?
1. Timebox
2. Action item
3. Communication plan
4. Follow-up
5. Cadence
Which meeting type would describe a daily stand-up?
1. Collaborative
2. Recurring
3. Decisive
4. Informative
Which type of meeting would not be used to capture new product requirements from attendees?
1. Focus group
2. JAD session
3. Brainstorming
4. Demonstration

Assess Methods of Communication

Every time information is exchanged, whether through a quick cubicle drop-in or a formal written announcement, communication has occurred. Table 7-2 summarizes the major attributes of communication. From these factors, you can predict the advantages and drawbacks of each communication method and choose the one best suited to each situation.

Table 7-2 Communication Factors and Communication Tools

Communication Factors	Types
Direction (flow)	Push, pull, interactive
Timing	Synchronous, asynchronous
Mode	Verbal, nonverbal, written
Formality	Formal/official, informal/unofficial
Audience	Internal, external, general, restricted
Communication Tools	Examples
Medium	How information is packaged: as a written report, slide presentation, phone call, text message, oral conversation, email, press release, or memo
Platform/channel	Where information is transmitted: through video conferencing software, social media, telephone, project dashboards, fact-to-face meetings, or chat applications

In its most basic form, communication is the flow of information (message) from a source (communicator) to an audience (receiver). The message is encoded in a communication medium, travels via a channel, and is transmitted during a communication session. The information in the message can include ideas, instructions, or emotions. The flow can travel in three directions:

Push communication: The communicator sends (pushes) a communication to an audience. In-app notifications, press releases, and sent emails are push communication.
Pull communication: The audience seeks out (pulls) a communication from a source provided by the communicator. Websites, project dashboards, and retrieved emails are pull communication.
Interactive communication: Communication flows back and forth between two or more people at the same time (bidirectional or simultaneous). Participants take turns being communicator and audience. Live meetings, instant messenger chats, and phone calls are interactive communication.

Push and pull indicate how communication is transmitted and received, not the medium being used. Sending a written report through email is push communication, while posting the same report to an intranet for stakeholders to download is pull communication.

Noise is any factor (not just sound) that interferes with communication, such as bad acoustics, participants cross-talking over a speaker, distractions, electronic interference, and poor video quality.

Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication

Synchronous communication means that participants receive and exchange information in a communication session in real time. Interactive communication is synchronous, with all parties continually listening and responding to each other (as with face-to-face communication). Asynchronous communication has a delay, meaning the communicator and the audience enter the communication session at separate times. Push and pull communications are both asynchronous.

Synchronous communication allows rapid feedback; communicators can tailor their message on the fly to meet the audience’s needs. For example, a listener might ask the speaker to repeat an unclear phrase or define a term. When handled well, synchronous communication creates a continual improvement loop. If not well facilitated, it can create noise and obscure information with confusing cross-talk or distracting chatter.

Synchronous communication is the quickest way to exchange ideas, making it the choice for urgent issues and emergencies, conflict resolution, and brainstorming. It supports more nuanced discussions than does asynchronous communication. Most communication in an Agile project should be synchronous. On the downside, it needs all parties to be free to communicate at the same time and requires additional technology (such as cameras or mobile devices) to overcome geographic distance.

The strength of asynchronous exchange is that it can be accessed when convenient to the audience and revisited on demand. Audience size does not degrade message clarity, and the recipients can be anywhere in the globe. It also provides a built-in record of the communication. However, it limits the audience’s ability to respond, provides no feedback to the communicator, and slows knowledge transfer. Asynchronous messages can sound the alert in an emergency but will not help resolve it.

Written, Verbal, and Nonverbal Communication

Written communication is anything text-based, including voice dictation, emails, chats, reports, press releases, and handwritten notes. It produces a record and is integral to project management. All official project communication must be written. Written text is the most formal and precise communication, but it is weaker at conveying emotional content. While written facts are not likely to be misinterpreted, written tone is, and a badly phrased or hastily written email cannot be recalled once sent.

Verbal or oral communication includes phone calls, live speech, sign language, and meetings. It is the fastest and most unconstrained way for team members to interact, build relationships, and share tacit knowledge. Because verbal communication is ephemeral, it should be logged or documented in a written follow-up to be saved in the communication archive when it covers significant project issues.

All verbal communication is accompanied by nonverbal communication: body posture, tone of voice, speaking volume, and gestures that all augment (or directly contradict) the words being spoken. Project managers need to be able to read nonverbal cues to effectively manage conflict and understand the emotions that drive interactions among team members or stakeholders.

Formal and Informal Communication

Formal communication is frequently based on a predefined template or standard adapted to a specific need. It is used for any official communication that represents the project or the organization, including press releases, reports, project kickoff meeting briefings, company memos, and internal policies. Formal communication is powerful in that it channels decision-making for the project, but inflexible in that it cannot deviate from its purpose or format and remain effective.

Informal communication includes all unstructured information flows: written, verbal, or nonverbal. Casual emails, text messages, hallway discussions and ad hoc discussions, nods and waves, smiles, scowls, and gestures continually outpace formal communication. Because it requires no preparation or effort, informal communication is the easiest way to convey critical project knowledge or train team members. Whereas formal communication is used to create project documentation, informal communication drives the decisions made before they enter formal channels. Agile methodologies rely more heavily on informal communication than do predictive projects. Note that many modes, like email, can be formal or informal, depending on the message’s content.

External and Internal Communication

Internal communication takes place within the project, team, program, organization, or group of stakeholders, whereas external communication travels outside the organization to customers, vendors, or the general public. Like formal communication, external communication will usually follow a specific format or template and require authorization to release, such as a blog post or ad campaign.

Internal communication can also be categorized by hierarchy. Vertical communication travels up or down the organizational chart (for example, from project manager to board member or from product owner to team member). Horizontal communication occurs between peers with the same level of authority.

Sensitivity and criticality rules govern how information should be shared both internally and externally. General communication can be distributed to any audience, while restricted communication (such as a statement of work) may require that the external recipient sign a non-disclosure agreement. Project managers should also provide a way for team members to communicate internally and privately about issues like personal conflict.

Develop Communication Platforms/Modalities

The communication management plan (or communication plan) includes guidelines for communication types (status updates, issues, and so on), methods/platforms (email and dashboards), and recipients (project manager, team lead, and team member). Once the platforms are chosen, the project manager is responsible for configuring them to support project work and ensuring that team members have access. The project manager may also need to set up private channels for team communication only.

The communication plan should include tools that keep team members aware of each other’s activities, especially in software development projects. It should be easy to see the in-progress status of each module, artifact, or document, and they should be accessible in a joint repository such as GitHub. The team should only use communication channels that your organization supports; for example, some companies block the use of third-party cloud drives due to security issues.

Other development tasks for project communication include the following:

Setting up access to internal systems (like SharePoint) for external contractors
Distributing an emergency contact list that all project members can access offline
Verifying that social media accounts (and their credentials) are documented in the communication plan

Manage Project Communication

Project managers must understand all communication methods and mediums in order to determine which are best for any situation that may arise. These choices are influenced by many factors, as discussed in detail in this chapter.

NOTE

Project managers should be aware of general differences in communication between Agile and Waterfall or predictive projects. Communication tends to be more open, informal, synchronous, and unconstrained in Agile projects; stakeholders communicate constantly throughout project execution and have open access to team members. Waterfall projects limit stakeholder communication to specific times, channels, and cadences, and they isolate team members from direct stakeholder feedback. In Agile, the project manager will be more concerned with moderating multiple communication channels, and in Waterfall, the project manager will focus more on preparing communications for regular distribution to stakeholders.

Overcoming Communication Challenges

The primary factors that affect project communication are language barriers, geographic separation and time zone differences, technological factors, and cultural differences. Project managers must also be prepared for interorganizational and intraorganizational differences, communication plan requirements, and plain old personal preference. Understanding these influences can help a project manager pinpoint issues that are delaying or interrupting tasks and choose the best solution. Taking the time to overcome, or at least mitigate, these barriers can improve communication quality, increase the team’s internal cohesion and trust, facilitate knowledge transfers, improve productivity, and decrease overall development time.

Language Barriers

The effects of language barriers are usually easy to anticipate. If project team members or stakeholders do not share a common language, the project manager will have to provide translation or interpretation services. Solutions may involve translating documents, employing interpreters for verbal communication, or using visual methods of communication and training. If the issue is fluency level, adding closed captioning for live speakers and subtitles for recorded audio can greatly improve comprehension. Another strategy is for the affected team members to learn some basics of the other language(s) needed, which is also an excellent means of team building. Even though mastery of the other language is rarely achieved, just learning the basics can help with simple communication. Having a bilingual team member is also feasible, but constantly translating for the team can become a strain and might delay project work.

While verbal language barriers seem obvious, projects may also involve hearing-impaired personnel. Sign language interpreters may be needed. Some deaf or hearing-impaired people read lips, but that does not help if they speak or read in a different language from other people with whom they need to communicate.

Time Zones and Geographical Factors

As with language barriers, it is fairly easy to anticipate how time zones and geography will affect project communication. The communication plan should always document the time zone and area for team members or stakeholders who are not co-located. The project manager should be mindful during scheduling to ensure that time and location will not affect tasks or dependencies; this includes accounting for regional holidays. The communication plan should list methods of sharing meeting results with absent members if time zones conflict with their ability to attend.

EXAMPLE: A project manager and most of her team are based in New York, NY, USA, on Eastern Standard Time (EST), UTC–5. Other team members reside in New Delhi, India, on India Standard Time (IST), UTC +5.5, and in London, England, on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), UTC +0. The project manager might schedule the weekly team meeting as a half-hour video conference at 8:00 a.m. EST (6:30 p.m. IST, 1:00 p.m. GMT) so that the New Delhi team members do not have to work late into the evening. Another option would be to schedule a daily remote stand-up from her home at 7:00 a.m. EST for the international team only (5:30 p.m. IST and 12:00 p.m. GMT), and have a second daily stand-up for the New York team at 10:00 a.m. EST. The project manager could share any issues reported by the international team members during the second, local stand-up.

The primary challenge of geographically separate teams is that it can limit most interactions to slow, asynchronous methods like email, decreasing communication frequency and quality. To compensate, encourage team members to interact more frequently and to try multiple synchronous channels, such as phone calls, Skype, Slack, and chat. All team members should know when they can communicate with remote coworkers and which channels to use. Some communication tools can trigger an alert if a team member sends a message or schedules a meeting outside of the recipient’s working hours.

Be sure to remember that geographical factors affect team members differently. Team members in different countries, or even different parts of the same country, might face very different weather or traffic conditions that affect travel, procurement, or meetings. A project manager in the northeastern U.S. may need to convert all in-person meetings to video conferences during winter to minimize weather hazards.

Technological Factors

Given how much project communication relies on technology, it can be daunting to contemplate the many ways it can interfere with communication instead. A weak technical infrastructure can make it difficult for team members to coordinate their work on joint tasks or solve problems. Technological factors include faulty or aging equipment, unreliable utilities, accessibility issues, user discomfort, and security.

The project manager should document any known technological issues and attempt to resolve or bypass them. For example, all video calls should include a dial-in number so that team members can join by phone if their Internet connection is interrupted. If a user is uncomfortable with a tool or application, determine whether the problem is lack of training or accessibility. Not everyone can see in color or type text messages on a mobile device. Shrinking device sizes, in particular, affect both older populations and the visually impaired. Documenting which communication platforms team members or stakeholders do not like or cannot use is just as important as documenting their preferences.

Security is a crucial technological factor. Devices issued to personnel may need security controls to protect the organization’s assets, but the project’s needs may conflict with the organization’s security policies. Security controls may need to be disabled or overridden temporarily to let a team member complete a specific task, but they should be restored when the task is complete. For example, the organization’s security policy may block computers from transferring data through USB connections, making it impossible to back up the hard drives on remote team members’ laptops to external media. The project manager should find a secure workaround, such as an approved online backup accessed through a secure cloud gateway.

Finally, as a project manager, you must stay proficient with project management software and Agile tools and adapt to new tools as they are added by the organization. To meet these challenges, you may want to acquire an entry-level technical certification or set aside a training budget for personal skills development. As a proficient modern project manager, you need to keep up with technical complexities so that you can effectively handle projects from start to finish.

Cultural Differences

Cultural differences influence how a person thinks about, hears, and sees the outside world as well as how they interpret communications. Culture can refer to a country or region of origin but also to cultures of affinity based on shared interests and attitudes. It is the project manager’s job to perceive and translate cultural differences among stakeholders and team members and to bridge communication gaps.

Cultural differences can affect communication in several ways:

Cognitive constraints are largely unconscious worldviews that influence perception. Common sources are religious beliefs, literacy level, educational background, gender, and economic status.
Behavioral constraints are the unspoken rules that affect verbal and nonverbal communication. Examples include making eye contact, directly discussing an issue versus talking around it, interrupting a speaker, and encroaching on someone’s “bubble” of personal space.
Emotional constraints are deeply held beliefs regarding the display of emotion. They affect whether people find it acceptable to cry, yell, speak boldly, act humbly, or display any strong emotion in the workplace—and how they react when other team members do so.

EXAMPLE: A project involves teams in two different countries. A team member in one country always agrees to the deadlines set by her manager in the other country, but she frequently misses them without explanation. The project manager consults an expert who explains that the team member’s local culture considers it rude to tell a superior “no,” even if the superior’s request cannot be met. The cultural expert is hired to train both teams on how to communicate clearly and set feasible goals.

Cultural differences can exist within the same building, or even within the same team. Interorganizational differences are the differences between organizations, and intraorganizational differences are the differences within an organization. Different divisions within an organization may have very different communication requirements (such as the communication medium, platform, or cadence), which project managers need to recognize and anticipate.

EXAMPLE: All stakeholders receive an emailed status update prior to the weekly meeting. Over a couple of meetings, it becomes apparent that one stakeholder is not reading the status updates, because he often asks questions about topics that were addressed in the email. The project manager questions the stakeholder privately and discovers that he thinks the status emails are not significant. The stakeholder works in a department that must meet stringent requirements for legal discovery, and he believes that a real status update email would be encrypted. Because the updates were in plaintext, the stakeholder thought they could not contain important project information.

Remember that remote team members can feel excluded from an established on-site culture. The best way to overcome this issue is to encourage frequent meetings and verbal communication and ensure that remote members have as much access to project documentation as on-site members. If possible, bring remote members on site for at least one visit per project.

Maintaining Communication Records

All significant project communication (including written notes captured from meetings as well as official documents) should become part of the permanent project record. These archived documents become a valuable repository and knowledge base for future projects, and they also provide a paper trail for procurements. This does not mean that every single email or chat generated during project work is stored; only important messages need to be retained. Everyday updates between team members sent via text messages are just normal conversations, but you would archive an email requesting the change board to authorize a change that affects the project.

A project manager has three key responsibilities regarding records:

Security: Preventing unauthorized access to restricted information.
Integrity: Ensuring that all relevant records are captured in their most accurate form and not altered in transit or storage.
Archiving: Retaining each type of record for the correct length of time in the required format(s) and using the approved storage method(s).

Communication Security

Security means to protect communication records from unauthorized access, corruption (loss of integrity), or theft. Your specific security practices will be governed by both the project’s records management plan and your organization’s data control policies. Authorization for access can be assigned to an individual or to a project function or job role. To provide confidentiality, you should not allow individuals to access project records for which they do not have authorization. Some information may go on the general project dashboard, while some status reports may have an approved email distribution list; project tools can also assign varying levels of access at the user level. When a project communication is classified for sensitivity, the label should include a data owner. Requests to access restricted records should be approved by the data owner, not the project manager (unless they are also the data owner). Data classification and labels are covered in Chapter 16, “Foundational IT Concepts and Operational Change Control for IT Project Management.”

Confidentiality can be provided by encrypting electronic data in storage, in usage, and in transmission as well as by securing physical storage (such as a locked filing cabinet). To ensure availability, all valid users must have access to the service. While it may be difficult to account for all service outages, project managers should identify service outages that could occur as risks and then document alternative solutions for the team members.

Communication Integrity

Integrity means to maintain the consistency, accuracy, and trustworthiness of a record. Integrity can be addressed through technical or analog means. Your records management plan may require that important project communications be digitally e-signed (such as contracts) or encrypted in storage. Digital signatures can prove message integrity as well as nonrepudiation (sender/receiver validation). Hashes can verify that a communication was not altered when it was transmitted or downloaded.

Individuals should not be able to edit project records after they are stored or to hide project communications from the record. Sometimes project communications are not so much hidden as they are redirected; you may need to limit the ways in which communications are exchanged in order to keep major project communication funneled through the primary platforms and channels authorized for project use, making them easier to capture.

Most projects result in a plethora of documentation, usually distributed in printed form, which requires version control and strategic distribution. Project managers should retain a list of printed media that pertains to the project, noting who owns the master files or should receive copies. Recording this information will help ensure that all interested parties receive documentation when it becomes available and that documentation is not lost if a team member suddenly leaves a project.

Communication Archiving

Archiving means to maintain records in storage until their life cycle ends and they can be destroyed. In larger organizations, archives will be managed by the PMO. As with security, your archiving practice will be dictated by the records management plan and your organization’s record retention policies. The latter governs all contracts, legal records, documents containing sensitive or proprietary information, and communication that should be retained for legal reasons (such as performance reviews). The record retention policies will clarify which types of records should be retained and for how long, as well as the correct storage and disposal methods. Meanwhile, the records management plan documents which project communications must be archived and who has the source documents. It also clarifies the format required for storage (such as printed copies of emails or notarized physical copies of agendas).

Control Project Communication

All team members and stakeholders should have access to the communication plan and use it to guide formal and informal communication. However, communication issues are inevitable in any project. Poor communication can lead to differences in expectations, decreased productivity, or scope creep. If unchecked, communication issues can escalate into outright conflict. Common sources of conflict and conflict resolution techniques are covered in detail in Chapter 11, “Executing Phase Activities.”

Escalating Communication Issues

An escalation plan for project communication is much like an IT help desk escalation plan: its goal is to direct issues that threaten a milestone or impede project work to the appropriate tier in the hierarchy for resolution. While an issue log or risk log attempts to solve a problem directly, escalation redirects an issue into another channel for resolution. The escalation plan can be maintained as a section of the communication plan, or it can be kept as a separate document, but both should be accessible to the team. If a category of issue can be escalated multiple times, the plan includes the escalation path.

An escalation plan should include categories of potential issue scenarios, a role or person who owns the response, a decision trigger to show when to escalate, and severity levels. Some escalation can be lateral (from one team member to another with specific skills). Also, different scenarios may need different sensitivity levels. For example, the project manager might want the team to know how to escalate a problem with the development environment, but not how to escalate vendor issues. However, team members should know the appropriate way to escalate a problem with a coworker rather than deal with it directly. Table 7-3 shows an example of a partial escalation matrix.

Table 7-3 Example of an Escalation Matrix

Scenario	Trigger	Level 1	Contact	Level 2	Contact	Notes
Development environment	Team cannot open authoring tool.Team cannot get into ticketing system.	15–30 minutes downtime	Yusef Parker, operations team lead	More than 30 minutes or more than three incidents per week	Tanesha Lee, operations manager	Notify PM before escalating to Ms. Lee
Accounts receivable	License payments not sent on time; seats expiring.	One late payment per month over three months	Account manager (cc: Sam Williams after third contact)	Two or more late payments per month, warning email from vendor	Pat Cornick, VP of operations

An escalation plan reduces friction, redundancies, and delay by ensuring only the relevant people are contacted with issues. One frequent scenario is when team members field questions from stakeholders. In most cases, stakeholder communication should be funneled through the project manager, scrum master, or other team leader instead. A good project manager or scrum master will shield team members from overly frequent inquiries from customers or stakeholders that interrupt team progress.

Project managers should understand when to let a situation try to resolve itself versus escalating the issue (and bringing conflict) before it damages the project. The first step should be to try to resolve the issue locally. If a sincere effort doesn’t work, document the impact to the project and verify the correct authority with your manager. In the preceding example, your project is affected because your accounting department is not renewing your software licenses on time. It would be inappropriate and counterproductive to escalate immediately to the vice president. However, if multiple payments are missed and your first attempts to correct the issue with the accountant do not work, then you should loop in your manager, Sam Williams, each time you contact the accountant. If the issue continues, it should be escalated to the person with the authority to fix the accounts receivable process, because overseeing the payments is taking your time away from project work.

Revising the Communication Plan

Like all project management documents, the communication plan is a living document that will change during execution. It is commonly revised when the project adds or loses a stakeholder or ends a phase. The project manager may adjust the meeting cadence in response to stakeholder feedback or update a stakeholder’s preferred communication method. After verifying that the communication goals will remain the same after the change is implemented, you should revise both the communication plan and the project schedule to reflect any schedule changes. If stakeholder communication data (such as email address) changes, it should be updated in the stakeholder register as well. The stakeholder register and the communication plan are both detailed in Chapter 10.

Meeting Roles

Meeting roles are not permanently assigned like project roles; they are assumed for the duration of a meeting to help meet its goals. The project manager usually sets the agenda and the guest list, sends the meeting invitations and follow-up, and tracks attendees who were assigned action items. However, the project manager is not supposed to facilitate or record every meeting. If at least one other person can be support staff, the project manager can pay full attention to the actual meeting activities. The people assigned to fill meeting roles can be external to the team or even to the organization. Specialized meetings, like focus groups and joint application development (JAD) sessions, may require a trained facilitator hired from outside the company.

Scribe

Smaller meetings and well-established Agile meetings, like scrum meetings, can rely on their participants to take notes and update their own project dashboards. A scribe captures the results of more formal meetings in writing, creating documents to be archived with project communications and/or distributed to the team. The scribe does not have to be a member of the team, or even have product knowledge. When used, a scribe records action items, follow-ups, meeting minutes, annotations to the meeting agenda, brainstorming session results, and the results of official meetings that should be entered into project records.

Facilitator

A facilitator maintains the vision for the meeting and is responsible for it meeting its goals. This person controls everyone’s participation, guiding the group and keeping activities in line with the agenda. If communication gets noisy or stagnant, the facilitator solicits contributions and encourages attendees to consider all points of view. In smaller meetings, this person documents the meeting results and future action items, but more involved meetings will use a scribe so that the facilitator is free to focus on meeting management.

While this is not a definitive list, here are some techniques of successful facilitation:

Choose a supportive locale with adequate facilities.
Prepare an agenda and define concrete, realistic goals, matching activities to the meeting’s goals.
Schedule food and regular rest breaks.
Model active listening and objectivity.
Tone down aggressive communication and head off conflict.
Redirect teams to focus on key topics or tasks, not digressions.
Allow the team’s work to guide the outcome rather than directing their work.

Attendees/Target Audience

Attendees or target audiences are the team members and stakeholders attending the meeting. The terms audience, participant, attendee, and target audience are interchangeable in this context. Attendees should never be selected through a “may as well add them to the invite list” approach; it is important to weigh the time commitment of a meeting against the attendee’s schedule. Attendees who should attend a meeting, but cannot due to schedule constraints, should review the meeting minutes. In practice, the attendee’s role and responsibilities in the meeting will depend entirely on the type of meeting.

Meeting Tools

A meeting is a structured communication form. Although meetings can have widely varying formats and purposes, there are common tools, techniques, and artifacts to govern the structure and ensure that a meeting executes according to its plan. Among these tools are timeboxing, agenda-setting, meeting minutes, action items, and follow-ups.

Timeboxing

A timebox is a predetermined time frame allocated to one unit of work or goal. Timeboxes are typically fractions of the overall schedule; their purpose is to keep a process moving by allocating just enough time to advance (or, hopefully, finish) a task without delaying future work. However, the timebox method halts work when the clock runs out, finished or not. In Agile and other adaptive approaches, a timebox refers to the sprint duration or the length of time an activity will take (such as one week or one month). Work not finished at the end of the timebox is added to the backlog or reprioritized into a new timebox.

When applied to communication, a timebox is allotted to a unit of communication or an agenda item, such as introductions or presentations, so that meetings do not run over or omit presenters. A meeting scheduled to run from 2:00−2:30 p.m. is timeboxed, as is an agenda item that gives Charlotte 15 minutes to present a slideshow.

Agenda-Setting/Publishing

A meeting agenda is a document that provides the topics of discussion and activities planned for a meeting. (The exception is daily scrum meetings, stand-ups, and other meetings with a set format.) An agenda keeps the meeting on track, facilitates timeboxing, makes sure that meeting goals are achieved, and creates a communication record. Agendas are prepared (or set) and distributed (or published) in advance of the meeting, but they can be revised after the meeting to reflect any items that were added or omitted before they are archived.

Meeting Minutes

The meeting minutes are a record of what was discussed and decisions that were made during a meeting. The minutes should be published formally for review by project stakeholders. Meeting minutes can simply summarize key points of discussion or provide a full written recap of what was discussed, who discussed it, who was present, which items need follow-up, and which decisions were made. Minutes are particularly important when key team members are invited but unable to attend, or when the meeting’s attendance and outcome should be logged for regulatory purposes. They create a record of project decisions and are a valuable resource for generating lessons learned documentation.

Brief, informal minutes can be taken by a scribe or team member and should be distributed to participants and relevant stakeholders. When possible, minutes should be distributed on the same business day as the meeting unless they require formatting to meet a standard. They are typically sent as an email but can be logged to project dashboards or sent in chat channels according to the communication plan.

Remember that the agenda is there to guide the meeting, and the minutes are created to record what happened during the meeting. Because impromptu meetings are variable, they will not have an agenda. If an important project decision is made during an impromptu meeting, you should record and publish meeting minutes in lieu of an agenda.

Action Items and Follow-Ups

An action item is a previously unknown or unassigned task that is identified as a requirement during the course of a meeting. Action items are assigned to team members (the action item owners) along with a completion goal or time; they are usually expected to be completed by the next meeting. Action items differ from issues in that they should require few resources—often only a single resource—and usually take less than one week to resolve. These items should not cause delays in the project.

A follow-up is an after-action following an action item that seeks to update its status or resolve it. To follow up after meetings, a chat or email is sent to request a status update on the action item or to resolve it. If sent in written form, the follow-up may summarize a list of the issues introduced in the meeting, along with the people responsible for each. The best time to send a follow-up email or chat is right after the meeting to help ensure that the attendees follow through with their action items and to ensure no action items were forgotten. The project manager or team member can also schedule a follow-up meeting to collect the status of action items and update the project status report.

Meeting Types

Scheduled meetings occur regularly, while impromptu meetings arise by chance or as project conditions change. Some meetings are triggered by the project’s phase, such as the kickoff or closure meetings. Whatever their cause, all project meetings serve one of three purposes: to create value, to share information, or to find consensus, and they can be classified as collaborative, informative, or decisive meetings, respectively. Some events may blend types; for example, a two-day all-hands meeting could combine a presentation (informative meeting) with a tabletop exercise (collaborative meeting).

In collaborative meetings, all attendees have equal control over and input into the meeting’s outcome, regardless of their place in the organization’s hierarchy. Decisive meetings also empower their attendees, but senior management and sponsors may drive the outcomes. Informative meetings are mostly driven by the presenter and facilitator, and attendees have little control over the meeting’s format. (While daily stand-ups are a collaborative exchange of information, their format cannot be varied.)

Collaborative Meetings

Collaborative meetings bring a group together to work in unison to achieve a specific goal. The purpose is usually to generate value, such as customer feedback, prototypes, new ideas, or a solution to a problem. Collaborative meetings are primarily creative, and information flows in multiple directions. They work best when they are conducted in person and are kept small enough that everyone can communicate clearly and stay on task. Meetings with more than a dozen participants benefit from periodically forming small breakout groups for targeted discussion. The main formats are workshops, focus groups, brainstorming sessions, and joint application development/review (JAD or JAR) sessions.

Workshops

Workshops are centered around a scheduled activity that all attendees should perform, such as a tabletop exercise or strategic planning session. Facilitated workshops are used to quickly define requirements (or some other aspect of the project) and reconcile the differences. This type of meeting requires a stakeholder balance, particularly if the project manager suspects that members will have opposing viewpoints. For example, accounts payable and accounts receivable may each think a different component of a financial application needs to be completed first. Workshops need a facilitator who can keep the group moving along but does not try to affect the decisions being made. While the project manager may facilitate a smaller group, it is often best to separate these roles because the project manager should be the voice of the project and may have to negotiate conflicting requirements.

For a workshop to succeed and not waste participants’ time, all attendees should take part in the activity (except for scribes). Project managers and facilitators should take care not to let the workshop spin into a presentation or demonstration led by one person or dominated by a small group. All lessons learned and group findings should be provided in written form as soon as possible after the workshop concludes.

Focus Groups

The purpose of a focus group is to conduct in-depth research within a small audience to better define a market or a set of requirements. It brings together SMEs and attendees, who may or may not be stakeholders, and gathers the attendees’ expectations and ideas around a particular project or result. Focus groups work best when they are limited to five to twelve participants, plus at least one facilitator and one SME. In between answering prepared questions, the attendees take open discussion time to share examples of use cases and give their views on success criteria.

Focus groups can also recruit external participants to represent a theoretical customer. In this style of group, the mock customers are presented with a product demo or concept, and the facilitator documents their honest reactions in a controlled way. After viewing the demo, the participants discuss the product’s pros and cons among each other. They may have one or more rounds of discussion, each facilitated (but not guided) by the moderator, before taking a final survey or other assessment. This style yields real-world insight into the product’s likely reception in the marketplace, and the conversational style allows more insight into opinions than surveys or other tools.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a popular technique that inspires creative, associative, nonlinear thinking from the participants. Brainstorming is fast, informal, and usually fun; its purpose is to rapidly generate a large number of ideas in a short amount of time and then distill them into a workable list relating to an open-ended scenario or problem to solve, such as project risks or alternate approaches to a design issue. After the list is generated, its line items are analyzed to find the most feasible and discard the least workable. Like workshops, brainstorming sessions typically include SMEs, stakeholders, and team members. They also require facilitation to keep the meeting on track and constrained to its designated time block. Uncontrolled brainstorming sessions can waste time and generate more chaos and noise than value.

Joint Application Development/Joint Application Review Sessions

Joint application development (JAD) sessions, sometimes called joint application reviews, are a type of workshop in which the customer and the project team collaborate on software product design and review prototypes as they are developed. They were invented in the 1970s as a faster way to gather requirements and specifications than interviews, and they are easily adapted to both Agile and predictive projects.

The mandatory JAD roles are the facilitator, an executive sponsor, SMEs, business users, and a scribe. The executive sponsor is the ultimate decision-maker who owns the results. Each JAD session has a defined set of objectives, an agenda, documentation, and a schedule of activities and exercises. Because JAD sessions can run from a full day to a week or more, they require an outlay of time and budget, can be difficult to coordinate, and can become overly complex for nontechnical users. Their advantage is generating prototypes with direct customer involvement and less rework or rejection.

Informative Meetings

Informative meetings are meant to convey project details, persuade an audience, or provide training in a process or tool. Meetings in this category place more limits on back-and-forth interaction between the presenter and attendees. Information primarily flows one way, from the presenter to the attendees, except during questions or feedback. Stakeholders and team members are expected to evaluate the information as it is presented, minimize chatter, and ask questions only during designated timeboxes so that the meeting stays on track. The meeting should produce an informed audience that can form opinions about how much value the product or initiative poses.

Unlike collaborative meetings, informative meetings can be easily scaled to hundreds or even thousands of participants by renting a convention facility or providing a virtual meeting link. They are an effective way to coordinate knowledge, sell products, or roll out new products or company initiatives. However, they run the risk of low audience engagement.

Demonstrations/Presentations

Demonstrations show the functions or features of the product or project results. They are one of the most valuable ways for Agile projects to align actual project results with the customer’s requirements and gather the feedback needed to guide the next iteration or sprint. This type of meeting requires more discussion time to go over the customer’s reaction and would be followed by a product refinement meeting. Regular demonstrations should be scheduled in the communication plan. However, demonstrations apply to any project methodology and are a primary avenue for product sales.

Presentations share information about the project or product, usually in the form of slides, charts, graphics, project dashboards, audio-visual files, graphs, and project documents. Presentations are used to share schedule and budget progress (or lack of progress), threats/opportunities, issues, burndown charts, and so on. Online webinars are a classic example of an externally focused presentation.

Stand-Ups

Daily stand-up meetings are a key Agile tool and a core component that makes the Agile team align rapidly to shifting requirements. Stand-ups require that the project team members report on their individual progress and align their daily priorities at a high level. Each team member takes turns reporting the prior day’s accomplishments and pain points. They may note issues that need later follow-up, but the strength of a stand-up is its brevity: the goal it to limit the session to 15 minutes. Stand-ups were originally developed as part of the scrum methodology, but because they are an easy, flexible format that adapts to any type of project, they can be part of any project framework.

Status

Project status meetings are scheduled in the communication plan, which should also include a template for their agenda and an attendee list. They are not intended to resolve issues or discuss any one point in depth but rather to align project knowledge. They should present a summary of the progress made since the last report, such as milestones reached or deliverables completed. Status meetings are ideal for low-information stakeholders who want to be kept informed but are not responsible for project work.

Decisive Meetings

Decisive meetings are held to make a decision about the project's next steps and then formulate the action to take. They may require additional project documents related to the flexion point, such as change request forms or the issue log, the project scope baseline, or the schedule. They also require a clear agenda so that everyone who enters the meeting knows its purpose and their personal level of authority over the decision. It is important to document the action items generated from these meetings and distribute them to the correct team members so that the decision is carried out.

Because decision requires consensus, the meeting should be small enough to facilitate open discussion. It is unlikely that a large number of people all have the power to weigh in on a project decision; the project documents should list the person with final decision-making authority if there is no easy consensus.

Change control board meetings, which were covered in Chapter 3, “Change Control Process Throughout the Project Life Cycle,” are a type of decisive meeting.

Refinement

Refinement meetings, also referred to as backlog refinement meetings, are a scrum meeting type that decomposes the highest priority backlog items into user stories for inclusion in the next sprint. They also help the team prioritize the backlog in the first place and to insert new items by their relative priority. Items near the bottom of the list are least relevant, may be vaguely worded (“This seems like a good idea at some point”), and may be pruned away during refinement.

Task Setting

Task-setting meetings decide which tasks or activities the team will focus on in the next timebox and then assign the tasks to the appropriate team member. This can be done during a daily scrum meeting or whenever a new action item is found. If tasks are set during an ad hoc meeting, the manager should send a follow-up communication to document the request.

Sprint planning meetings, also referred to as iteration planning meetings, are task-setting meetings in which the project team decides how much of the backlog can be delivered in the forthcoming iteration.

Project Steering Committee Meeting

Also referred to as a stakeholder board meeting, a project steering committee meeting is held regularly to ensure project success and goal achievement and to provide governance from start to finish. Its purpose is to identify the next steps that will keep the project moving forward successfully. If the organization includes a PMO, it will be part of this meeting. The project steering committee usually controls the project’s budget and is authorized to make project decisions that are outside the project team’s authority.

Exam Preparation Tasks

As mentioned in the section “How to Use This Book” in the Introduction, you have a few choices for exam preparation: the exercises here, Chapter 17, “Final Preparation,” and the exam simulation questions in the Pearson Test Prep Software Online.

Review All Key Topics

Review the most important topics in this chapter, noted with the Key Topics icon in the outer margin of the page. Table 7-4 lists each reference of these key topics and the page number on which each is found.

Table 7-4 Key Topics for Chapter 7

Key Topic Element	Description	Page Number
Table 7-2	Communication Factors and Communication Tools	206
Section	Synchronous and asynchronous communication	207
Section	Written, verbal, and nonverbal communication	208
Section	Formal and informal communication	208
Section	External and internal communication	209
Paragraph	Manage project communication	210
Paragraph	Overcoming communication challenges	210
Section	Control project communication	216
Table 7-3	Example of an Escalation Matrix	217
Section	Meeting roles	218
Section	Meeting tools	219
Paragraph	Collaborative meetings	222
Paragraph	Informative meetings	223
Paragraph	Decisive meetings	225

Define Key Terms

Define the following key terms from this chapter and check your answers in the glossary:

communication

push communication

pull communication

noise

synchronous communication

asynchronous communication

Review Questions

The answers to these questions appear in Appendix A. For more practice with sample exam questions, use the Pearson Test Prep practice test software online.

In a typical focus group, which interactions produce the most value for the product owner?
1. Interactions between the moderator and the target audience
2. Interactions between the SME and the moderator
3. Interactions among the target audience members
4. Interactions between the SME and the target audience
Your project team members all work in the same building. They prefer informal communication like chat applications and in-person desk meetups. Which communication method are they using?
1. Synchronous communication
2. External communication
3. Verbal communication
4. Asynchronous communication
You are the project manager for a software development project. When the project started, all team members were in a single location in the U.S. Three team members left and were replaced by team members in Spain. All the team members work on the same schedule. Not everyone speaks English. What should be your primary concern regarding project communication?
1. Cultural differences
2. Language barriers
3. Geographical factors
4. Relationship building
Your records management plan requires that all meeting agendas be archived in an online repository. You find your remote meetings will sometimes fail to cover all agenda items, or they will add items not originally listed. Which options would preserve communication integrity? (Choose two.)
1. Use a document naming convention.
2. Use a secure connection to upload the agendas to the internal repository.
3. Use a scribe.
4. Use version control.
Project managers need to recognize when technological factors influence project communication. Which of the following is an example of this influence?
1. One team member has been hired as a contractor for this project.
2. One team member works in a different country than the other members.
3. One team member speaks English as a second language.
4. One team member has unreliable Internet access.
You are the project manager for your company. All of the team members for your current project are employees of other departments. You have asked for daily verbal status updates as part of the scrum meeting. A couple of the team members also want to submit written weekly project status reports, as required by their departmental supervisor. Which communication influence is occurring?
1. Cultural differences
2. Confidentiality constraints
3. Intraorganizational differences
4. Interorganizational differences
Why is it most important to capture accurate written notes following a verbal meeting in which an important project decision was made? (Choose two.)
1. To preserve communication integrity
2. To preserve communication criticality
3. To facilitate archiving records
4. To preserve communication security
5. To facilitate consensus
In response to an unplanned service outage, your company records a public service announcement that plays automatically when a customer calls your help desk. How would this communication be classified?
1. Formal, synchronous, internal, push
2. Formal, asynchronous, external, pull
3. Formal, asynchronous, external, push
4. Formal, synchronous, internal, pull
Which artifact is the primary output of a decisive meeting?
1. Product mockup
2. Action item
3. Dashboard information
4. Status report
Which outcome would indicate that a workshop with 20 attendees was poorly facilitated?
1. The product backlog was not discussed.
2. The agenda was bound by timeboxes.
3. All attendees left their seats to move around the room.
4. The meeting was informative.