Project communication management is one of the nine knowledge fields in the modern project management knowledge system. Project communication management provides a critical connection between people, ideas, and information. Anyone involving the project should be prepared to send and receive information in project "language" and must understand how they participate in personal identity to affect the entire project. In project management, because communication is a soft indicator, the role of communication is not quantified, and communication on the project is often invisible. However, communication on the success of the project, especially the success of the IT project is too important. This paper combines the specific significance of communication in the IT project and the impact of communication on the implementation efficiency of the project.
First, the special meaning of communication in the IT project
For projects, information communication must be communicated by scientifically organize, command, coordinate, and control projects. Communication The impact of the project is often subtle, so people often do not feel the important role of communication in successful projects, but in the painful reflection of failure projects, it is best to see the dangers of communication. There is no good information communication, and the development of the development and interpersonal relationship will have restrictive role. Communication Failure is the largest blockbox on the road of IT project. The typical example of often can hear is that a group cost of tens of millions of ERP projects are not used. The reason is that the developed software is not required, and there is no improvement of users' work efficiency, it is not difficult to see The root cause of this embarrassing situation is to communicate failed. When a project team has a great effort, but whether the work does not get to the customer's approval, should it be calmly reflect on the communication problem between the two sides? The most common phenomenon in software project development is a round of rework, leading to the cost of the project, and has repeatedly delayed the construction period. Why can't you do things again? The reason is or communication is not in place.
The usual project management textbook is attributed to the importance of project communication into four points:
(1) The basis of decision making and planning. The project team must be based on accurate, complete, timely information. In the project, the information between the external environment can be accessed, and the information of many changes can be obtained to provide a basis for decision-making.
(2) The basis and means of organizing and controlling management processes. In the project team, there is no good information communication, and the situation is unknown, and scientific management cannot be implemented. Only through information communication, master all aspects of the project team can provide a basis for scientific management to effectively improve the organization and efficiency of the project team.
(3) Establishing and improving interpersonal relationships is essential. Information communication, opinion exchange, through many independent individuals, groups, organizations, becoming a whole. Information communication is an important means of human being used to express ideas, feelings and attitudes, seek sympathy and friendship. Unblocked information communication, can reduce the relationship between people and people, improve people and people, and the team.
(4) Important means of successful leadership of project managers. The project manager is passed to the lower personnel through a variety of ways and understands and executes the following personnel. If the communication is not smooth, the lower-level personnel cannot correctly understand and implement the leadership, the project cannot be carried out according to the manager's intention, eventually leading the project confusion or even project failure. Therefore, improve the communication skills of the project manager, and the success of the leadership process is great. In addition to the above four points, according to the characteristics of the IT project, the importance of IT project communication is also reflected in the following:
(5) The information system itself is a product of communication. The software development process is actually the process of transforming manual operations into computer programs. Unlike normal production and processing, there are specific tangible raw materials and products, software development raw materials and products are information, and the intermediate process is also information, and the generation, collection, transmission, and preservation of official communication management. It can be seen that communication is not only the necessary means of software project management, but more importantly, communication is a means of software production and the indispensable process in the production process. (6) The flexible standard for software development needs to communicate. Software is unlike processing screws, nuts, there are very specific standards and inspection methods. The software standard is very flexible. Often in the user's heart, users have easy to use the standard of software success, and this standard is difficult to express, completely before software development. Therefore, the development process project group and the user's communication interaction is the only way to solve this practical problem.
Because of the above features, in the IT industry, the success or failure of communication determines the success or failure of the entire project, the efficiency of communication affects the cost, progress of the entire project, and the risk of communication is one of the biggest risks of the IT project. Second, the impact of communication on project implementation efficiency
The impact of communication on project implementation efficiency is often indirect, not easy to sense and quantify. Many project managers believe that communication between the project management nine knowledge is a soft indicator, it is difficult to assess the communication skills of a project team member. The following is discussed from several communicating directly or indirect relationship factors to discuss communication on IT project implementation efficiency.
Project complexity and implementation efficiency
The amount of work consumed by the communication path depends on the complexity and coupling of the software project itself. Joel ARON, the original IBM in Gatesburg, Maryland, studied the efficiency of programmers on the 9 large projects he worked. He divided these systems based on the interaction between programmers and system parts, which obtained the following implementation efficiency:
Very few interactions 10,000 instructions for a small number of interactions per person, more than 5,000 interactions 1,500
Generally, the interface complexity of the underlying software (operating system, compiler, embedded system, communication software) is much higher than the application software (MIS, operation maintenance software, management software).
In estimating software development project workloads, you should fully consider the category and complexity of the task, because abstract, communication is always large during the complex system development process. Also, there is a high-profile industry background, consider the development of the developer to be able to pay for the industry knowledge.
Team scale and implementation efficiency
The FP Brooke of the IBM 360 operating system mentioned in his "Moon Dead": The number of people who need to cooperate communication affect development costs, because the main components of the cost are mutual communication and communication, and corrected communication Inappropriate results (system commissioning) caused;
People must be communicated with people to solve interface issues between their respective tasks. If the project has N staff, N × (n -1) / 2 mutually communicated paths. Assume a person separately developed software, the annual implementation efficiency is 10000 line code, and each communication path can be equipped with a 500-line code, and the team size and communication consumption and implementation efficiency have the following relationships:
Team size N-communication path number N × (n -1) / 2 communication consumption (LOC / person) Communication path number × 500 Implementation efficiency (LOC / person year) 1000- Communication consumption / N 1 0 0 10000 4 6 3000 9250 6 15 7500 8750 10 45 22500 7750
It can be seen that a person has been developed separately, the highest per capita efficiency, but unfortunately, most software scale and time requirements do not allow alone to be developed separately, and the communication consumption of the team development has grown. Therefore, the project team should be as thin as possible, and the task is relatively efficient with fewer people in the most likely allowable time. Team organization method and implementation efficiency
It is not difficult to see that the communication efficiency can improve the work efficiency of the project team by reducing communication consumption. Good team organization can reduce the number of unnecessary communication and cooperation, is a key measures to improve team efficiency.
Reducing the way AC is a clear personal division of labor and interface definitions. Carnegie - Mellon University's D.L.Parnas believes that programmers only know that they are responsible, rather than the development details of the entire system, the highest work efficiency.
An effective way is to change the structure and method of communication. For example, in the example above, a 10-person project team, communication path has 10 × (10-1) / 2 = 45, this calculation is based on a hypothesis, ie, the relationship between members in the team is symmetrical, each person The communication status in the team is completely equal, and the communication mode is full channel type. Similarly, the organization changes to the following figure:
The related pictures of this topic are as follows:
A system architect divided the system into three relatively unique subsystems, the architect responsible for the interface definition between the subsystems; then divided the remaining 9 people into three groups, each team is responsible for a subsystem, group group The interface between the long and architects communicate between the subsystems, and the exchange between the groups is conducted through the architect organization; the entire channel is used in each group. Then, such an organizational way is only 9 communication paths, and the communication efficiency is five times that of full channel.
Of course, the prerequisite for this method is that there is a software architect that overalls the entire project and defines all interfaces accurately and completely.
Team's taciting and implementation efficiency
Obviously, the team's tacit approach has a great impact on software implementation efficiency. A team of long-term work, mutual trust, forming a tacit method and style, may save a lot of unnecessary communication, but in contrast, the team in the initial cooperation is different from each other's background and style. The reason is not high, and the communication consumption should be fully considered.
The high flow rate of software enterprises has caused difficulties in team cohesion and taciting temperament. The cohesiveness and taciting approach need for a long time, a large number of internal communications and communication can gradually form, and it is not difficult to understand that sustained good communication and communication is a team's intangible assets, natural, stable, and tacit development team forming a software company. The truth of core competitiveness.
There is still a little can't be ignored, that is, software development This kind of creative homework for the human brain is the main tool, the mood and excitability of developers are very affected by personal work efficiency, and one is in a good atmosphere, cooperation tacit understanding The team's center is generally better, and the energy that can be brought about by this good atmosphere is inevitable.
Third, high efficiency communication skills
The role of a high-quality team organizer and coordination manager often determines the success or failure of the project, and an excellent project manager must be a person who is good at communicating. Communication Research Expert Leudlo (Ludlow, R.) Referring to: Senior management often spends 80% of the time to communicate in different forms, and the normal manager is 50% of the time for propagation. It can be seen that the efficiency of communication directly affects the work efficiency of the manager. Introducing a lot of communication skills, only a few techniques for improving communication efficiency.
Communication must have a clear purpose
Before communication, the manager should figure out what is the true purpose of this communication? What should I understand? The unimplement communication is usual in meaning, and it is also invalid. Determines communication targets, and communication content can be used around the target tissue planning to be achieved, and different communication methods can also be selected according to different purposes.
Be good at listening
Communication is not just that, but listening. A effective listener can not only understand the meaning of words itself, but also understand the meaning of the speaker. Only concentrating on listening, actively investing in judgment, in order to understand the intentions of the speaker, only to understand the speaker's intent, in order to choose the right language to convince him. In this sense, the ability of "listening" is more important than "say". I am eager to understand a kind of instinct. When the speaker feels very interested in his remarks, he will be very happy to further deepen your exchange. Therefore, experienced listeners usually use their own language to tell the speaker to the speaker, so that the speaker is convinced that he has heard and understand the speaker.
Avoid endless disputes
There is inevitable debate during communication. There are many controversy in software projects, such as techniques, methods, which often chatter, never stop. Endless disputes are of course not conclusions, and it is a black hole in swallowing time. The best way to end this debate is to change the relationship between the two sides. During the debate, both parties believe that they and the other party are right in the dispute, and the relationship is symmetrical. From the perspective of systemism, the two sides form a symmetrical system, and the symmetrical system is the most unstable, and the method of solving the problem is to change this symmetrical relationship as a complementary relationship. For example, a person gives up his point of view or a third party intervention.
The project manager must play his own authority in this controversial and make full use of its own decision-making right to the project.
Efficient modernization tools
Email, project management software and other modern tools can indeed improve communication efficiency, closer to the distance between the communication, reducing unnecessary interviews and conferences. The project manager of the IT project should be used well.
