Would you please comment on this discussion and add your thoughts?

The suggestions provided in Chapter 10 for improving project communications are, in my opinion, hard to oppose. A stakeholder analysis is a crucial means of understanding who you need to be communicating to, why you're communicating with them, and what you should prioritize in your communications with them. By understanding the stakeholders and your role or your team's role in relation to each of them, you will be able to communicate with all members of the project team more effectively. Imagine not taking this critical step, and communicating lab problems to the biostatistics team - not only have you wasted time, but you've also cluttered their email making it more difficult for them to sort out which correspondence is vital to their job. Performance reporting is also an important aspect of project communications. Performance reports serve to update all stakeholders regarding the project's "big picture", and in turn help, the various stakeholders understand how their responsibilities relate and contribute to the project's success. Further, disseminating this report to the team at effective time points can help boost morale and keep productivity high. Alternatively, if the report shows data that is not favorable, then it may serve as a mechanism to show where there is room for improvement. A communications management plan is the center of all project communications and should serve as a reference document for stakeholders - without this document, it would be extremely difficult to streamline communication. A suggestion that I may tack on to chapter 10, would be to encourage open communication practices (elaborating on the need for soft skills). For example, stakeholders should feel comfortable expressing differences of opinion as well as confusion. If you have a project team that is afraid to ask questions, it could lead to big problems.

References:

Schwalbe, K., Information Technology Project Management. Smartsheet. 8th ed (2017). Cengage Learning, Boston, MA.

Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge: PMBOK GUIDE. 6th Edition. Project Management Instituted Inc., 2017. Pennsylvania, USA.