The ability to plan and execute multiple projects simultaneously requires significant experience and skill. Though many companies have these capabilities at a level that enables them to complete individual projects successfully, few can extend those resources across several linked efforts, such as when coordinating smaller projects to occur during a planned power outage. Communications are among the first elements to suffer when trying to do too much. Bringing together the right blend of facilitator experience, visibility capabilities, and information-sharing skills makes your team a communication powerhouse.
Executives typically know what their big projects are, but they’re less likely to know what the minutia entails. And while outages may be short in duration, there’s a lot to get done in that narrow time window. A single power disruption project typically involves numerous other efforts running in parallel. With so many projects to monitor, your leadership team needs a single source of communication to keep everything in focus.
The Central Communications Hub
Putting project management expertise at the center of your communications engine is key to power disruption success. Once your outage starts, most projects will be in a constant pivot. An experienced consulting partner can centralize project communications, giving stakeholders critical access to the latest information, changes, or concerns. With communications coming from a single place, everyone can understand the scope and nuances of everything that’s in flight, any changes that are happening, and how people may need to adjust based on nearly real-time updates.
Communication and Coordination Together
It’s easy for senior staff to focus on the big projects, but they also need visibility into all the other events. A project partner can facilitate critical conversations around the entire project ecosystem to help identify risks, resource constraints, and conflicts. A collaborative environment is essential for organizations with good communication skills but where internal hierarchies and an extensive stakeholder list complicate efforts to share information effectively.
There’s also the need to coordinate and communicate with different project owners. Activity timing is often complex, and orchestrating tasks to ensure every job gets done during the least disruptive time window helps maintain productivity for others working in the area. This coordination requires ongoing communications across different functional areas and various disciplines to determine who’s going to be in an affected area and when opportunities exist to execute activities without disturbing the project’s other elements.
Delivering the Communications Executives Need
Your senior leadership group needs information showing how the outage is going overall, but they want more than a high-level view. An experienced consultancy can help unpack the many small details an executive may want to review. Access to the complete picture provides reassurance that the outage is on track for success and that related projects are hitting their targets. It also instills confidence that everything will be back online on time.
Partnering with a project management consultancy to manage your power outage communications can augment your internal teams and facilitate critical conversations with executives around risks, opportunities, and progress to ensure everyone has the information necessary to keep activities on track.
PMAlliance, Inc uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project portfolio management.