Communication Requirements Analysis

General technique · See it on the map

Guide only — Deciding who needs what information is a judgment call informed by the stakeholders assistant, not a computed procedure of its own.

Working out who needs which information, in what form, and how often, before choosing a channel for any of it.

When to use it

At the start of planning communications, before picking any method or technology: for each stakeholder, determine what they need to know, why, and how often, from the stakeholder register and the project's organizational structure and reporting lines.

When to avoid it

Don't skip straight to a channel or a cadence 'because that's what the last project used' — a communications plan built without naming the actual information need behind each line tends to over-communicate to people who don't need it and under-communicate to the few who do.

Steps

1. List each stakeholder or group from the register with their role, interest, and influence.
2. For each, name the specific information they need and why — a decision they make, a risk they own, or an approval only they can give.
3. Feed the result — who needs what, and how often — into the communications management plan as the requirement the rest of the plan's methods and technology choices have to satisfy.

What it produces

• A stated information need per stakeholder or group, feeding the communications management plan.

Common pitfalls

• Copying a prior project's stakeholder list instead of analyzing this project's own reporting lines and decision points.
• Naming a channel or frequency before naming the actual information need it is supposed to satisfy.

Worked example

For the retrofit, the site foreman needs daily sequencing detail, while the client sponsor needs only a weekly summary with a decision flagged when one is pending.

Source

• PMBOK-6 §10.1.2.2

Where it comes from: this technique is named by the PMBOK Guide, 6th edition.