Good communication within the project team is essential for the quality of the project. Each collaborator has different tasks within the project and acquires skills and knowledge throughout it. The project leader is responsible for this experience being shared. To do so occasions must be created for an exchange to take place regularly. These meetings will also provide the opportunity to check that collaborators' expectations and appreciations of the situation do not differ too much and stay on the same course.
Internal communication also means the communicating and sharing of information with the responsible institution and not only within the project team. If there are no established communication channels they must be created (see 'Internal transfer'). The most important elements for internal communication are:
- type of information transfer: meetings, workshops, Internet sites, Intranet, e-mail, official reports, memoranda, conference calls etc.
- regularity and form of information transfer
- type of collaboration
- type of decision-making
- responsibility for and type of communication with the project partners
You do not establish regular occasions for such exchanges to take place because you believe that the team members are part of the project process and therefore automatically informed.
If you organize regular occasions for exchanging experiences and make sure that there is time to talk about expectations, uncertainties and unclear points, you avoid unnecessary conflict and misunderstanding.
- Organize meetings of exchange and discussion which you direct yourself, and where you can check if each collaborator has all the information necessary to take an active part in the discussion, to plan his next steps and to implement them.
- Have clear goals for all such meetings. Meetings which are too formal and do not have enough content have a frustrating and paralysing effect. Give them up!
- Pay particular attention to unclear points and make sure they are discussed until they are resolved
- Always make a short, dated, official report
- Are there rules of communication within the team?
- Does the communication improve continuously?
Project management
Criterion
