Project Communication Management Strategies - Paper Example

The achievement of any project hugely relies on the communication. As such, it is the work of project manager to ensure that information is distributed from stakeholders to employees and project members. Project communication management is a general procedure that makes sure suitable and timely generation, collection, distribution and eventual disposition of project information (Ying & Pheng, 2013).During project implementation, managers and stakeholders are key figures and require to be informed regarding the progress at all cost. As much as the development team will efficiently work to their best, stakeholders might be challenging to some point. During ERP implementation process, it is expected that the team might infuse more requirement during development. Also, stakeholders might want to alter the scope of the entire project. This is a typical behavior of stakeholders who failed to provide the requirement of the system when the implementation team was collecting the elements of the system. However, with communication, some of challenging factors from stakeholders are minimized.

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It is, therefore, essential for Brewton project management team to develop an effective communication strategy to facilitate the effectiveness of disseminating information during ERP system implementation. The project manager needs to plan procurement and communication and develop a comprehensive suite of project plans which are set on a clear roadmap. The good plan reduces uncertainty, increases understanding of the project goals and improves resource competence. The primary task of the project manager is to influence the workforce to take action to achieve this; the project manager should develop and an active communication amongst by staying into contact with everyone and pass information between every active member within the implementation process including the funding body.

The project manager is required to understand all the departments within the organization and how the current technology works. A strong interpersonal skill and communicative is an added advantage. The project manager will frequently hold meetings regularly with relevant stakeholders and managers to brief them on the progress of implementation process. Additionally, training is essential to both the development team and the stakeholders to make sure that there is smooth operation during ERP implementation cycle. This limits challenges such as changing requirement during ERP developing process since the stakeholders will be well trained before enlisting their needs. The developing team comprises of designers and coders that are responsible for full software implementation. The testing team that is tasked with verifying the functionality of the software developed and lastly, there is maintenance team that will take care of the software full implementation.

Documentation

Documentation of the system is vital to facilitate smooth performance and support of Brewton Business ERP application. The biggest failure of ERP implementation is the lack of training and education. To avoid this, the Brewton needs to come up with its End- User Documentation to ensure that everyone understands the system. The company might document both online and on paper, the paper documentation will always be available regardless of what happens to the computer system although online documentation is easier to retrieve. The documentation file should comprise of the overview of the project and a list of the modules that have been changed and some indication of which parts of the module have been modified. Documentation should also include a list of business processes and workflows that have changed

Change Control Process

Change control process is a process of dealing with proposed legislation to items that had previously been referred to as permanent. This means that an object is exposed to changes the moment it has been signed-off and stored in under configuration control (land, 2008). The reason of change control is to assure that if signed off object is changed then,

Key player participate in control of any following changes

Stakeholder are well informed of the changes

This it to say that there should be proper change control process for any change to be regarded as successful. A good change control process paves the way for suggestions for altering any configuration object and level of experience is needed to modify the configuration object. At Brewton business, every item pass through system, unit, integration and an advanced standard of authority is necessary to support the changes. This is referred to as promotion of a configuration item.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing is practice in which a person or a company performs the task and offers services for another company. Outsourcing in technology is standard as organization outsources for services that are regarded as intrinsic to managing a business and serving customers at the same time. Brewton also wants to benefit from the advantages that come with outsourcing. Thus, the company has decided to outsource from IBM Corporation for storage space the moment the implementation process of ERP is done. This is beneficial to the firm as IBM will provide services such as maintenance and security to its information. However, even with the advantages that come with outsourcing, the company will incur more costs related to outsourcing.

References

Land, S. (2008). Managing Knowledge-Based Initiatives. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge

Ying, Z., & Zheng, . S. (2013). Project Communication Management in Complex Environments. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Science & Business Media.