What kind of report describes where a project stands at a specific point in time?

Chapter 10: Project Communications Management

1. Project members should either have strong technical skills or soft skills.

a. True

b. Fals

e

ANSWER: False

RATIONALE: Feedback: For projects to succeed, every project team member needs both types

of skills, and needs to develop them continuously through formal education and

on-the-job training.

POINTS: 1

DIFFICULTY: Difficulty: Moderate

REFERENCES

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LEARNING O

BJECTIVES:

INFO.SCHW.14.70 - LO: 10-1

NATIONAL ST

ANDARDS:

United States - BUSPROG: Technology

TOPICS: The Importance Of Project Communications Management

KEYWORDS: Bloom's: Knowledge

2. Adding more people to a project that is falling behind schedule often causes more setbacks because of the increased

complexity of communications.

a. True

b. Fals

e

ANSWER: True

RATIONALE: Feedback: Many top managers think they can just add more people to a project

that is falling behind schedule. Unfortunately, this approach often causes more

setbacks because of the increased complexity of communications.

POINTS: 1

DIFFICULTY: Difficulty: Moderate

REFERENCES

:

p.392

LEARNING O

BJECTIVES:

INFO.SCHW.14.71 - LO: 10-2

NATIONAL ST

ANDARDS:

United States - BUSPROG: Communications

TOPICS: Keys To Good Communication

KEYWORDS: Bloom's: Comprehension

3. People have different personality traits that often affect their communication preferences.

a. True

b. Fals

e

ANSWER: True

RATIONALE: Feedback: It is important to understand individual and group preferences for

communications. People have different personality traits that often affect their

communication preferences.

Cengage Learning Testing, Powered by CogneroPage 1

Another important tool for managing project communications is performance reporting. Performance reporting keeps stakeholders informed about how resources are being used to achieve project objectives. It also motivates workers to have some progress to report. Performance reports are normally provided as status reports or progress reports. Many people use the two terms interchangeably, but some people distinguish between them as follows:

• Status reports describe where the project stands at a specific point in time. It addresses where the project stands in terms of meeting scope, time, and cost goals. How much money has been spent to date? How long did it take to do certain tasks? Is work being accomplished as planned? Status reports can take various formats depending on the stakeholders’ needs.
• Progress reports describe what the project team has accomplished during a certain period. Many projects have each team member prepare a monthly report or sometimes a weekly progress report. Team leaders often create consolidated progress reports based on the information received from team members.

Selecting the Appropriate Communication Methods and Media
There are three broad classifications for communication methods:

i. Interactive Communication – as the name implies, two or more people interact to exchange information via meetings, phone calls, or video conferencing. This method is usually the most effective way to ensure common understanding.
ii. Push Communication – information is sent or pushed to recipients without their request via reports, e-mails, faxes, voice mails, and other means. This method ensures that the information is distributed, but does not ensure that it was received or understood.
iii. Pull Communication – information is sent to recipients at their request via Web sites, bulletin boards, e-learning, knowledge repositories like blogs, and other means.

Controlling Communications
It involves monitoring and controlling project communications to ensure that stakeholder communication needs are met.

Keys to Good Communications:
Project managers say they spend as much as 90 percent of their time communicating. The key important concepts are:

a. Focusing on individual and group communication needs
b. Using formal and informal methods for communicating

Oral communication also helps build stronger relationships among project personnel and project stakeholders. People like to interact with each other to get a true feeling for how a project is going. Research has indicated that in face-to-face interaction, 58 percent of communication is through
body language, 35 percent is through how the words are said, and a mere 7 percent is through the actual spoken content.

c. Providing important information in an effective and timely manner
d. Setting the stage for communicating bad news, and
e. Understanding communication channels.

Another important aspect of communications is the number of people involved in a project. As the number increases, the complexity of communication increases because there are more channels or pathways through which people can communicate. You can use the following simple formula to determine the number of communication channels as the number of people involved in a project increases:

where n is the number of people involved.

Example:
Two people have one communication channel:

Three people have three channels:. Four people have six channels, five people have 10, and so on. The following Fig. illustrates this concept. You can see that as the number of people increases above three, the number of communication channels increases rapidly. Project managers should try to limit the size of teams or sub-teams to avoid making communications too complex. For example, if three people are working together on a particular project task, they have three communication channels. If you added two more people to their team, you would have 10 communication channels, an increase of seven. If you added three more people instead of two, you’d have 12 communication channels. You can see how quickly communication becomes more complex as you increase team size.

Figure 7-1 The impact of the number of people on communication channels

Good communicators consider many factors before deciding how to distribute information, including the size of the group, the type of information, and the appropriate communication medium. People often send e-mail messages that are quickly written and therefore not as carefully planned as they should be.
Communication is the oil that keeps everything working properly.

Which document describes where the project stands at a specific point in time quizlet?

What is project Performance Report?

Which type of report gives the status of a project and its expected completion?

What is the difference between a progress report and a status report?