The project communications management plan works to define how the communications for the project “will be planned, structured, monitored, and controlled” (Project Management Body of Knowledge, p. 299, 2013). In order to ensure that all aspects are clearly addressed, the following processes have been identified as necessary for implementation in order to ensure that communication is completed in a manner that works to facilitate project completion, while ensuring full documentation is present for all areas of the project: meeting management, work performance reports, performance reporting, deliverables status, schedule progress, costs incurred, feedback, and lessons learned (Project Management Body of Knowledge, 2013).

Work performance reports will be created on a weekly basis by each project team leader every Friday, being submitted to both the project coordinator and the project manager via email, ensuring that they are kept fully up to date on all aspects of the project (Project Management Plan, 2014). These reports should contain a summary of all work done through the course of the week, noting any issues or discrepancies that were reported to the project manager and project coordinator throughout the course of the week, thereby ensuring that all aspects have been fully documented. Meeting management will be accomplished by a set meeting schedule with team leaders, the project manager, and the project coordinator; automatic reminders should go out each Friday to individuals reminding them of the meeting and the anticipated content thereof, based on the project timeline set within the project management plan (Project Management Plan, 2014). The status of deliverables should be sent both from the project coordinator, notifying team leaders of the different items that are anticipated to be completed each week, and from the team leaders on the project, notifying the coordinator when each has been completed and the time that it was completed (i.e. on time, delayed, or ahead of schedule) with any potential reasons for status changes. Performance reporting will be accomplished by the project coordinator to the project manager, the executive sponsor, and the project sponsor, ensuring that everyone is kept in the loop regarding the status of the operations.

The schedule progress shall be sent from team leaders to the project coordinator, who will combine this information into a single report to be sent to the executive sponsor, project sponsor, and project manager, ensuring they are kept up to date on the overall status of the project’s completion. The costs incurred will be tracked by the project manager, determining how the project stands against the total budget outlined, and from there, the project manager will be able to determine if any additional budget manipulation is needed, with approval from the project sponsor and executive sponsor. Feedback should be given by team leaders, the project coordinator, project manager, project sponsor, and executive sponsor on an as needed basis, and upon successful completion of the project a postmortem should be done which allows the team to learn lessons from what occurred this time and to provide full and conclusive feedback about the success or failure of the project.

Risk management works to create plans that work to identify areas of potential risk for the project and to create subsequent contingency plans in order to address those risks, should they arise. In order to be fully comprehensive, the risk management plan must include a qualitative risk analysis, a probability and impact matrix, a risk urgency assessment, risk register updates, and assumptions log updates (Project Management Body of Knowledge, 2013).
In order to ensure that all components are contained within the risk management plan, the first thing that must be accomplished is the successful completion of a qualitative risk analysis, allowing the project manager to determine the exact areas that may pose a risk to the project, thereby allowing the project manager to see the different areas that may need additional attention as a result. The reasons for the risk should be clearly identified and defined, and the potential warning signs that such a risk should occur should be detailed. The probability and impact matrix will be closely tied to this information, determining the likelihood of one of these risks occurring, and detailing the impact that the situation would have if the risk did end up occurring. This will serve to provide the project manager a clear idea of what they could be expecting if such an issue should arise.

The risk urgency assessment will tell the project manager how urgent the implementation of a solution to a given problem within the project would be. It will serve as a means of ensuring that the appropriate response may be offered in the event that one of the risks to the project should occur. The qualitative risk analysis should be completed periodically throughout the course of the project in order to ensure that all potential threats are planned for and that nothing has the potential to be overlooked.

As information becomes available as a result of the risk assessments that are completed on a periodic basis, it will be necessary to update a risk register with that information, clearly documenting all potential risks and associated issues within the project. All of the information thus far discussed in the risk management plan should be included within this centralized location. This will allow anyone working to study the matter to easily access all information in one centralized location. Finally, the assumption log should be created, working to outline the many different assumptions being made about the potential risks associated with the project and the reasons for those assumptions. These should be updated weekly based on project progress and updated risk assessments, ensuring that everything is logged in full.