A project Communications Management Plan is essential with the diversity of audiences that will be looking for information about your project and the array of data you’ll be collecting. This plan helps you to avoid duplication of effort and to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.
A project Communications Management Plan is a document that specifies all project communications generated throughout the project, their target audiences, their information content, and their frequency. Prepare an initial version of your project Communications Management Plan in the starting the project stage of your project, and update it as needed in the carrying out the work stage.
At a minimum, your plan should specify the following for all project communications:
Target audience: The people whose information needs are addressed through the project communication
Information needs: The information that the target audience wants and/or needs
Information-sharing activity: The specific type of information-sharing activity to be used to transmit information to the target audience (written reports, presentations, and meetings, for example)
Content: The specific data to be shared in the project communication
Frequency: When the information-sharing activity occurs (can be either regularly scheduled or ad hoc)
Data collection: How and when the data for the report are collected