As more companies opt into long-term remote work, effective communication projects are more important than ever. In this new environment, your communication projects can’t rely on a set-it-and-forget-it approach.
They need to be proactive, comprehensive, and collaborative to be successful. However, designing or revamping communication projects can feel daunting.
That’s why we’re here to show you four best practices to successfully manage communication projects and a work software that can help you smoothly run any initiative.
What are communication projects?
As the name depicts, communication projects are projects focused on communication. Examples of communication projects include internal comms projects, marcomms projects, and business communication projects.
In practice, communication can be shared in various forms (verbal, written, and digital), within teams and company-wide. Effective communication projects help team members work more effectively together.
Managing a communication project is an ongoing exercise in collaboration. They require prioritization, frequent check-ins, and collaboration across your business, meaning teams may need to juggle various responsibilities.
Aside from the above, teams may face other difficulties when implementing communication projects.
Let’s get into them.
“Communication Projects” is a part of our Project Management Glossary — check out the full list of terms and definitions.
Key challenges with communication projects
Common challenges include:
Outdated communication approaches
Some businesses still use outdated communication methods. For example, maybe employees still insist on sharing important information on an old intranet that no one else reads. Upgrading your communication approach can help ensure everyone is aligned and on board.
Information or knowledge silos
Likewise, managing a team that is widely spread out can be a challenge with communication projects. Keeping your team regularly updated and on the same page will ensure knowledge is shared, not siloed. Each team member will know what’s going on, what they need to do, and what everyone is working towards.
Information overload
It can be easy to get overloaded with too much information. As always, you’ve got to adapt the message to the receiver. By just dumping information, you risk that it isn’t read at all. Try breaking down your communication project into manageable chunks instead.
Lack of tools/technology
Ultimately, the right technology can make or break your communication projects. We have a growing and widely distributed team at monday.com, but we overcome communication project challenges by having one source of truth for all project components, always communicating within the context of the work, and automating tasks such as notifications or reminders so nothing falls through the cracks.
With this in mind, let’s now dive into the top best practices for managing communication projects.
Communication projects only succeed if you have an effective strategy and manage everything all in one place.5 best practices for managing communication projects
Communication projects only succeed if you have an effective strategy. Here are some best practice tips to keep everyone on track and working towards the same goal.
- Assess your current approach: You likely already have some processes in place, so it’s time to assess what’s working and what isn’t.
- Maintain communication consistency with remote and hybrid teams: Hybrid and remote workers often miss out if workers in the office have impromptu meetings without sending a summary to relevant team members. That’s why it’s important that all team members have the right tools and technology for effective communication workflows.
- Encourage knowledge sharing among employees: Previously, you might have heard about project updates in a shared lunch area. Now, these casual touchpoints are hard to come by. To stay informed across the business you need to get creative and collaborative. From Slack to Loom to communicating within your Work OS, there is no lack of user-friendly chat platforms to help your team stay connected.
- Identify your communication project tools: If you don’t have the project management tools in place to support your communication projects, now is the time to act. When picking the right tool for the job, it’s important to understand your business requirements and align those with the tool you are considering.
Let’s look at how you might put this to work.
Managing communication projects with monday.com
Using monday.com’s Work OS helps you streamline any workflow. As communication projects can vary from small items to large scale projects, teams can utilize the monday.com template library, which offers hundreds of customizable templates for any use case.
Consider starting with our communications project template. You can also create Gantt charts.
Managing communication projects on monday.com will ensure increased transparency and easier collaboration across your entire organization, no matter how big or how small.
For instance, you can co-edit in real-time, instantly share comments, and drag and drop your text without disrupting your team members. In fact, you can literally enable hundreds of people to work together seamlessly in one workdoc.
Frequently asked questions
Here you can find the most commonly asked communication project questions to quickly get the answers you need.
What are communication project skills?
Communication is essential to successful project management because it forms the foundations of setting clear objectives, collaboration, feedback and more. Types of communication skills include active listening (checking that a message is understood), non-verbal communication (body language) and culture (being open-minded and encouraging towards new ideas).
Why are communication projects important?
Essentially, communication projects act as the roadmap for sharing information. The project defines what, who, when and how information will be shared — whether that’s across internal channels like email or external channels like social media — as well as how this communication will be tracked (for example views and clicks). What you say and how you say it is key to getting people onboard and working towards the same actions and goals.
What is a communication project tool?
Communication project tools help in a number of ways. For example, they help to map and automate communications so that the right people receive them and at the right time, so that people aren’t bombarded with too many messages and crucially it helps prevent sensitive information going to the wrong person. A good example of a communication project tool is monday.com.
Bring your communication projects to life with monday.com
As you can see, communication projects have a lot of moving parts. But with the right strategy, tools, and technology you can efficiently and effectively manage them.
Let’s go over some final tips for how monday.com can help with communication projects:
- Bring together your team and conversations about your communication projects using Boards to avoid digging through long email threads.
- Every communication project can be scheduled on the Dashboard. You can then stay on top of your schedule and know what’s coming up with calendar views.
- Know who’s working on what, and get notified of tasks moving from one stage to another.
Remember to break down your project into manageable chunks, and aim to manage everything in one place. You’ll soon start to see your communication projects come to life.
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