Fulfilling this obligation requires a full team effort.
Creating the right governance systems is critical to ensure the right information reaches the right levels of the organisation at the right time. For this to work effectively involves putting structure in place and having the right tools to maintain up to date information. These systems operate best in a culture of openness and accountability — and require leadership from the highest levels of the organisation to operate well.
Project professionals can support these systems, but we cannot do a lot to create the necessary culture. We can, however, have a major influence on how information is created and disseminated in the governance system.
The key features of communication that we can control are interlinked and interdependent, and can summed up in the acronym ACCURATE:
Available: The project information has to be accessible in various appropriate formats to all levels of management in as close to real-time as possible.
Complete: The project information needs to provide a full and accurate picture of the current and forecasted situation.
Concise: Executives are busy people—excessive detail does not help. They need to understand the bottom line. Your project stakeholder communication plan needs to take into account the needs of the stakeholder and communicate accordingly.
Understandable: Project management is full of technical jargon so we need to ensure we communicate in business language.
Relevant: Communicate information that is relevant to the achievement of business objectives. Just because something is important to the project team doesn’t mean it’s important to the overall organisation.
Auditable: If asked, you need to be able to provide the source of the information and the processing steps taken to consolidate and communicate the information.
Timely: Markets and teams operate in a 24-hour news cycle. Important information needs to be communicated immediately (you cannot wait for the monthly report).
Explainable: Project professionals need to be available to explain the information and help executives understand the consequences
Project professionals have a responsibility to make sure the information they are communicating meets this standard and is also ACCURATE.
How ACCURATE is your project information? Would it stand up to scrutiny and are you happy to be accountable for it?
