Communication Skills and Teaming are a Project Manager's Best Tools

Abstract

As a project manager, it is our job to control the scope, time and budget of an initiative with a defined start and end. The everyday logistics of how that occurs varies greatly from one PM to another and from one organization to another. Two skills that can be consistently used to support success are strong communication skills and teaming. Teaming is the art and skill of creating several small focused working groups to concentrate on very defined deliverables while working as a part of the whole project as one cohesive unit. Communication skills are a vast bucket into which many things can be grouped; in this particular scenario, I am referring to communications within your project teams, controlling communications to your customers/stakeholders and communication up to senior management. In this paper, I will explore the various tools and strategies, including teaming which can be used to increase project visibility, create stakeholder buy-in, encourage organizational change management and ensure project success.