PMBOK Communications Management

Overview

The PMBOK Communications Management skill supports the elaboration of documents for the Communications Management knowledge area — ensuring timely and appropriate planning, collection, creation, distribution, storage, retrieval, management, control, monitoring, and disposition of project information. It covers communications management plans, stakeholder communication requirements analyses (including channel calculations), communication matrices mapping who needs what information through which channel and when, status report templates with RAG indicators, communication technology assessments evaluating tools against urgency, security, and richness criteria, and communication effectiveness reports measuring whether communications are received, understood, and acted upon.

Getting Started

Upload your stakeholder register or project organization chart to the workspace and activate the PMBOK Communications Management skill. The agent will ask about team size, geographic distribution, organizational culture, and communication constraints (languages, time zones, security classifications). It then maps each stakeholder group to their information needs and produces a structured communication plan with escalation paths and feedback mechanisms.

Example Conversation

Below is an example of a typical session building a communication matrix for a distributed project. The agent maps stakeholders to communication channels and identifies gaps.

You: I need a communication matrix for our cloud migration project. We have 42 people across 3 time zones (US East, US West, and EU/Berlin). Key stakeholders: executive steering committee (5 people), project management office (3), infrastructure team (12), application team (15), security team (4), and business stakeholders (3 department heads). The project runs for 9 months.

Agent: With 42 stakeholders, you have up to 42 × 41 / 2 = 861 potential communication channels — this confirms the need for a well-structured communication plan. Let me clarify:

1. What are the overlap hours across all 3 time zones? (US East, US West, EU/Berlin)
2. Are there security/compliance constraints on communication content (e.g., infrastructure details restricted to certain groups)?
3. What tools are already in use? (e.g., Teams, Slack, Confluence, Jira, email)

You: Overlap hours: 9–11 AM US East (3–5 PM Berlin, 6–8 AM US West). Yes — security architecture details are restricted to infrastructure team and security team only. We use Microsoft Teams, Confluence, Jira, and email.

Agent: I’ve built the communication matrix with 11 communication types mapped to stakeholder groups. Highlights:

• Steering committee receives a monthly executive summary (email + Teams) and quarterly milestone review (video meeting in the 2-hour overlap window)
• Technical teams use daily async standups in Teams (respecting time zones) and a weekly sync during the overlap window
• Security-restricted content flows through a private Teams channel with membership limited to infrastructure and security teams — flagged in the matrix
• Cross-timezone challenge: I’ve scheduled all synchronous meetings in the 9–11 AM ET window. For the US West team (6–8 AM), I’ve noted this as an early-morning commitment and recommended rotating meeting times quarterly
• Escalation path: technical issues → PM → PMO → steering committee, with defined response SLAs per severity

The full matrix with 11 rows, feedback mechanisms, and a communication technology assessment is saved.

Document Excerpt

Below is a representative excerpt from a communication matrix drafted with the skill.

Communication Matrix — Excerpt

Project: Enterprise Cloud Migration Team Size: 42 | Time Zones: 3 (US-ET, US-PT, EU/CET) Communication Channels: up to 861 (n(n-1)/2)

Escalation Matrix

This excerpt is illustrative. Final content must reflect the specific project’s stakeholders, tools, and organizational communication policies.