1

Chapter 6: Communication in IT projects

Jukka Karkulehto and Juha Malmivirta

1. Introduction 2

2. Communication planning in new IT project 3

3. Communication plan 3Who is responsible 4

Which groups are involved and what information they need 4

What information will be communicated 5

How we are communicating - Encouraging Group Collaboration 6

How and where information will be stored 8

How information can be reached 8

4. The collaboration programs 9Electronic messaging 9

Information sharing 10

Document Conferencing 10

Audio Conferencing 10

Videoconferencing 11

Electronic Conferencing 11

5. Documentation 13Importance of documentation 13

Establishing document control 15

Internal Controls 15

External Controls 16Submission 16Distribution and reviews 17Retrieval 17

6. References 18

2

1. Introduction

Questions:

• How communication should be started in new project?

• What things the communication plan includes?

• What kind of programs are collaboration programs?

• What are steps to better documentation?

Our work’s main principle was to highlight meaning of communication in IT projects. Projects are

growing rapidly and without clear and well-planned communication projects can’t survive. It was quite

hard to find discrete and reliable information, but we tried to do our best. Our schema was quite open

but we tried to bring out different ways of communication. We try to make communication more clear

for readers and we also try to pressure the value of good documentation. Our principle is to make good

explanations so that everyone can understand what we mean.

What is very important in documentation is to make principles of methods that are used. Meaning for

example that everyone uses same kind of flowchart map or makes EER models for entity relationship

modelling etc. We don't handle such things in our text, but they should also be thought when

communication is planned.

3

2. Communication planning in new IT project

Communication is often underestimated in IT projects. Or maybe underestimated is a wrong word.

There are a lot of people involved in nearly every IT project. And everything what has been or will be

done has to be shared to all who have to now. Communication is critical both internally among project

team members and externally with stakeholders who are not directly involved in the day-to-day

activities of the project. Communication must be two-way. In addition to sending messages and

providing information, the project group must actively seek information and encourage open

communication from stakeholders. One of the first tasks that has to done is a communication plan.

3. Communication plan

There are a lot of things that have to be remembered when communication plan is made.

Here are listed a few of them:

• Who is responsible for project’s communication

• Which groups are involved and what information they need

• How information will be documented and classified for further use

• Where information will be stored and how

• How information can be reached

• What information will be communicated

• How and how often information will be communicated

• How the effectiveness and quality of the communication will be measured.

• Is there a lot of security problems, how user rights will be given

• Rules of what kind of presentations will be used

• What kind of communication equipments can be used

4

Who is responsible

The project manager is primarily responsible for project communication. All important communication

has to be approved by the people that information will concern. There must be clear lists of people

who can approve or reject different presentations (mainly documents).

Which groups are involved and what information they need

It’s very important to document all stakeholders and audiences who are involved. Then must be thought

of what kind of information will be shared to certain stakeholders. For example projects steering

committee needs very different information than some very technical people. And they also have

different amount of time to participate in exchange of information. Here is an example of stakeholders.

Example is from Oracle project that has been done in The Research Foundation of State University of

New York:

Audience Type of Information

• Campus project leaders (who will

determine what to pass on to campus

audiences)

• Central office management and staff

How and when they will be affected by the

implementation, including:

• Project plans

• key dates

• decisions about how things will work

• progress

Steering Committee and Board High-level direction of the project and issues to be

resolved.

External audiences General progress of the project with access to

details.

Figure 1: Table provides a general idea of the type of information to be communicated to each stakeholder or

audience.

5

There are five distinct types of stakeholders or audiences with whom the project office will

communicate

1. Campus project leaders. Campus project leaders have been appointed by their operations

manager to manage the implementation at their location. The campus project leader will be

responsible for communicating with all campus audiences, including operations managers,

campus team members, principal investigators and other sponsored project staff, and other

campus RF system users.

2. Central office management and staff.

3. Steering Committee

4. Board of Directors

5. External audiences, including SUNY, project suppliers such as KPMG and Oracle, sponsors,

vendors, and others with an interest in the OASIS project’s outcomes.

What information will be communicated

Principle is that any information has to be communicated and documented. Documentation is at least as

important as communication because if somebody is sick or moves out from the project it’s vital to

have all information in known place. Otherwise someone has to wait or even some information is lost.

Example from Oracle project:

During the first two phases (Definition & Analysis and Solution Design), project teams will

communicate directly with campus and central office subject matter experts. This direct two-way

communication is outside of the scope of this plan.

6

How we are communicating - Encouraging Group Collaboration

The main difficulty with group collaboration is that group members often are not in the same place at

the same time. If everyone can get together in a room it’s good and much can be accomplished but it

isn’t usually possible. Meetings are often hard to organise and people work at different locations at

different times. It’s hard to make people travel a lot to meetings. They get tired and can’t be as

productive as usual.

Telephones play an important role at group collaboration. Much communication takes place between

individuals by telephone and conference calls are very handy. But people are having a lot of other

meetings and telephone meetings have to be also planned before. Telephones are deficient because they

only provide verbal communication: texts graphics and images cannot be seen through telephone. (

Maybe in future…) Fax machines are better in graphic thinks, but they are not very easy to use and

they take a lot of time.

But to solve problems that telephone and fax has, workgroup information systems have been

developed. These systems make it easier for members of a group to collaborate over distance and time.

These typically use personal computers that are connected through LAN or WAN. The Internet and

intranets are also used. Workgroup information systems use many types of software, including E-mail

software. E-mail has made good improvement to file and other information sharing and people really

use it. Sometimes even for something useful. But E-mail isn’t all that workgroup information systems

include. There are also database software that makes available groups information sharing. Electronic

conferencing software helps group to discuss problems and reach decisions. By making these and other

group applications available, a business encourages group collaboration and it also makes project

managers job a lot easier. It’s project managers job to ensure these things before project can even start.

7

Figure 2: Communication in different situations

Example:

The format of OASIS communications will conform to an established identity system that

includes a logo, a template for the newsletter, and a standard layout for project-related documents.

This will help readers to identify project information and separate it from other RF communications.

The media we will use to communicate will be RF intranet and World-Wide Web site.

All project-related documents and information will be posted on the RF Web site (intranet) to provide

all stakeholders/audiences with timely and complete information in a way that is easily and always

available. In addition to the existing intranet site, we will develop a World-Wide Web site to provide

external audiences with pertinent information about the project.

Regular meetings

The Board, Steering Committee, Management Staff, and the OASIS Inter-Campus Committee

will meet regularly throughout the project to receive updates and participate in decision-making.

8

Monthly newsletter

The OASIS Update newsletter will be distributed monthly to provide all audiences with regular,

direct communication about project activities, dates, and other relevant information.

Existing newsletters/committee meetings

The project office will work to include project news in existing communication vehicles, such as

Personnel News and to include OASIS on the agenda of semi-annual meetings of campus committees

such as SPCC, Personnel Officers, etc., to ensure wide dissemination of information.

In addition to the above-listed planned communication activities, we will use other standard

methods during the course of the project to manage day-to-day communication, including e-mail,

telephone, teleconference, and Network News.

How and where information will be stored

It will be stored in many ways. Nowadays it’s important to store it electronically because it allows us

to use it in as many systems as we like. Security reasons also make it necessary to backup information

frequently. It’s most important that everyone knows where information will be stored and how stored

information can be used again.

How information can be reached

Nowadays there are a lot of programs that automatically store and put available documents that are

saved to system. Best of these products automatically update documents to intranet etc. they also

inform users that document that they are now using is updated or they even ask if it should be

automatically updated. These systems require that you have connection to documentation system

available whole time or at least when you want to see or save documents. These programs also save old

versions and keep track of version handling. They also look after user rights and user or administrator

can restrict document to certain groups only. So if document management system is available reaching

information is very easy.

9

4. The collaboration programs

The communication in today’s firms is very important. Lots of people work in the same project and are

dependent of other people’s contribution to the project. Often however, the people can work in

different locations or at different time and yet the information they produce is very important also to

other people. Therefore, to share the information to all people who need it, information must be

distributed in some way. To help people access to the information they need, many kinds of

collaboration programs have been developed.

There has been many steps in the development of collaboration programs. One of the first achievement

was the electronic messaging. Ever since new forms of collaboration programs have been introduced

to improve better communication between people. The most advanced collaboration program nowadays

is electronic conferencing.

Here we try to give presentation of different types of group collaboration program.

Electronic messaging

Electronic messaging has provided useful advantages to communication between group members. It

allows communication to take place between group members at different time from different places,

individuals can send written messages to others at any time of the day, and messages can be read

whenever the user want to read them. Also it is possible to send the same massage to the whole group

at the same time. In addition, the ability to add attachments to the e-mail is considered as one of the

biggest advantages of electronic messaging.

Sometimes it is more convenient to put the shared information in a single location and let each group

member access it as needed. One way of accomplishing this is with database software where shared

information can be created and each person can use database software to access the information

needed.

10

Information sharing

Information sharing is a workgroup application that involves sharing different types of information

among members of a group. Many different types of information as text, graphics, spreadsheets,

databases, video, and sound, can be shared. Users can access the information, change it, comment on it,

and add new information. Perhaps the most well-known information sharing program is Lotus Notes.

Information sharing allows communication to take place between group members at different times

from different places.

Document Conferencing

Sometimes group members want to confer on a document at the same time to gather opinions of the

subject and to review the information together. Document conferencing, also called data conferencing,

is a workgroup application that provides this form of collaboration. Group member at different

locations can simultaneously view a document containing text, numbers, graphs, and other forms of

information. Document conferencing provides good possibilities for document communication

between group members at the same time from different places.

Audio Conferencing

One of the common way to communicate among members of the workgroup is by telephone.

Telephones are universal and easy to use, so people find them very convenient to use. The telephone

can also be used to communicate when working with computers. For example, two people can talk on

the telephone about a document that is displayed on both their computer screens. Although not ideal,

this form of collaboration is used often.

Audio conferencing can also be used by connecting the group members in different locations by

computers to communicate by voice over a computer network.

11

Videoconferencing

During an audio conference, people often want to see who they are talking to. Facial expressions and

body language can sometimes convey information as much as the words that are spoken.

Videoconferencing is a workgroup application in which members of a group at different locations can

see each other at the same time that they are talking. It overcomes one of the disadvantages of audio

conferencing by providing visual communication. It is especially beneficial as a replacement for face-

to-face meetings that would require expensive travel by meeting participant.

Electronic Conferencing

Videoconferencing systems let members of a workgroup at different locations have audio and visual

communication with each other. Combining document conferencing with videoconferencing creates a

system with which workgroup members can also have document communication. This combination

forms a workgroup application called electronic conferencing.

Some desktop videoconferencing software can be combined with separate whiteboard or application

conferencing software to create electronic conferencing systems. More often, however, electronic

conferencing software, which integrates whiteboard or application conferencing with desktop

videoconferencing, is used. Such integrated software offers the most versatility in electronic

conferencing.

An example of an electronic conferencing system is Silicon Graphic’s InPerson. With InPerson, users

at any location can talk to and see each other while sharing images on an electronic whiteboard. Several

people can confer at on time, with all their video images showing on each person’s screen. Each

participant in the conference has a different-shape cursor for marking the whiteboard so that all users

know whose comments are appearing on the screen. Electronic conferencing systems such as InPerson

let users talk to each other, see each other, view objects held in front of the camera, hear recorded

sound, view recorded video, and see and comment on text, graphics, and other images on the

whiteboard.

12

Figure 3: Information sharing groupware screen. This is from Lotus Notes.

Electronic conferencing is designed primarily for use by users at different locations so that they can

confer at the same time. Some systems also let users work at different times, storing information and

then forwarding it to other users. For example, a user can work on text or a diagram on his or her

whiteboard, record video images and sound, and then send everything to other user for later review and

work. Thus, all participants in an electronic conference do not have to be available at the same time.

Electronic conferencing provides all forms of communication –audio, visual and document– between

group members at the same time from different places. Because all forms of communication can be

used, it is a very useful tool for group collaboration. It requires powerful computers and networks,

however, to handle the software and data, thus making it an expensive form of group computing.

13

Figure 5: A document sharing groupware screen. This is Webflow’s SamePage.

Time of

collaboration

Place of

collaboration Form of communication

Type of workgroup application Same Different Same Different Document Audio Visual

Electronic messaging X X X

Information sharing X X X X X

Document conferencing X X X X

Audio conferencing X X X

Video conferencing X X X X

Electronic conferencing X X X X X X

Electronic meeting support X X X X

Group calendaring and support X X X

Workflow management X X X

Figure 4: Summary of types of workgroup applications.

14

5. Documentation

Importance of documentation

An essential component of system development and project control involves the gathering, recording,

and updating of all pertinent information for the people who need it: managers, developers,

administrators, and ultimately, end-users. The documents in support of the Boeing 747 are said to

weight as much as the plane!

On most projects, the amount of documentation can be measured in inverse proportion to its usefulness

when poundage outweighs common sense. Document usefulness, like the system itself, is directly

dependent on the method used to control its quality.

Unfortunately, company efforts to improve their documentations often fail because it is considered a

nuisance rather than a tool. The more complex the project, the more valuable -and more vital-

documentation becomes.

A development project can be considered complex when one or more of the following is true:

- Twenty-five or more people work on the project, in any capacity.

- Two or more technical disciplines are involved

- The product employs a new software, hardware, or process technology.

- Multiple models, versions, or configurations are to be developed.

- A quarter-million or more lines of code will be written, figured with fudge factor times two and

Murphy’s Law.

- The project requires eighteen months or more to complete, figured with fudge factor and

Murphy’s Law.

- The project staff numbers work in different locations.

15

More often than not, projects escalate in complexity. Including documentation considerations in the

initial planning stages provides a hedge against having to further increase project complexity with

people dedicated to documentation that should have been produced and delivered earlier.

In addition, in order to be effective, documentation must be complete and current throughout the

developing project. Effective documentation is largely the result of effective communication.

Everything possible should be done to promote continuous communication from system inception to

completion so that the final system will include good documentation for the people who will be using it

to operate, build or maintain the system for their jobs.

No one can keep track of all the changes, as some people participate in meetings that decide small or

large project issues while others concentrate on their particular part of the project, go on vacation, miss

a meeting, take time off for an illness or celebration, are reorganized, or are replaced by new people. As

is true of the success of most company projects, good communication and its impetus must come from

the top.

Executives must be convinced that professional documentations are significant to the quality of the

company’s image and must transmit that conviction to the people who can contribute throughout the

project. Management time spent in defining the interactions between people is as important as time

spent in defining the interfaces of the system. Manager who consider all facets of the project success

include documentation and its control in their plans from blank page to the last minute release notes.

Discussions about the kinds and numbers of documents that the system will require should start with

the initial planning of the project. The people who directly and indirectly contribute to document

effectiveness must be encouraged to negotiate at all stages of the product lifecycle.

16

Figure 6: Document (data) communication

Establishing document control

The problem is not to restrict information, but to ensure that relevant information gets to all the people

who need it.

In order for information to be relevant, document control must be established to protect the integrity of

the documents. The better the internal control of the documents, the better their chance for containing

current accurate information throughout the project. The better the external control, the better the

chance that the information gets to all the people who need it.

Document control can be put under the umbrella of system configuration management. However, the

most efficient way to control all project documents is to locate the data in a centralized site and place

its maintenance under the control of a designated document controller.

17

For the specification and development documents that contain sensitive or classified information,

additional internal and external controls will have to be put in place.

Internal Controls

Internal document control procedures should be set up to store and protect online and hardcopy

versions of all documents. The document controller should be responsible for the organization and

location of documentation computer files.

Files should be accorded read/write privileges based on the sensitivity of the information and the

document development environment. File backup is critical protection. The backup should be marked

with the names of the files and the date and time of backup.

For document control of hardcopy, the document controller should establish notation for the original

version identifier and the conditions under which the identifier is incremented.

All documents should share a common cover sheet that identifies the document, the current version,

and the individual finally responsible for the document content. As the document proceeds through the

life-cycle phases, the responsible individual may change. The change must be reflected on the cover

sheet.

External Controls

External document control procedures should be set up to cover submission, distribution, and retrieval

of documents throughout the project.

Submission

The procedures for submitting a new document to document control should establish the following:

18

- The method to add a name to a distribution list.

- Security levels and their implementation.

- The approval necessary in order for a name to be accepted.

- The physical form of the document.

a. If the document is online, then how to grant access and read/write privileges.

b. If the document is hardcopy, then how to add the requester’s name to the distribution

list.

Distribution and reviews

The most critical distribution in the life-cycle is review copies. Good reviews are perhaps the most

important part of good documentation, and they are the result of careful reading, meticulous editing,

and timely return of documents.

Retrieval

Timely retrieval and resolution of outstanding documents is an important document control function.

When a document draft has not been returned in the specified time, it is project groups problem and

final responsible person is always project manager.

19

6. References

OASIS (Oracle Application Software Implementation Strategy) is the strategic initiative of the

Research Foundation in collaboration with the State University of New York to develop an

infrastructure for sponsored programs administration using new technology that will enable each

campus of the University to pursue its research goals.

http://www.rfsuny.org/oasis/communication.htm

Robert C. Nickerson :

Business and Information Systems

Paula Bell & Charlotte Evans:

Mastering Documentation