There is no question that one of the keys to success on all projects is communication. Almost every project struggles with communication at some point. We define communication plans, have meetings, share minutes, utilize the latest technology, build tools, and still communication is at best difficult. Though we are all born with the basic tools to communicate, and most of us spend a large percentage of our time communicating, we could all use some help being better communicators.

I believe that some of our communications challenges have to do with our predisposition to use speaking and writing as our primary means of communication.

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On a recent project, we were having numerous discussions regarding the complex scheduling of incrementally adding functionality to a new system (using an Agile approach) while simultaneously rolling it out to a large number of users over the period of a year (using a Six Sigma approach). The interdependencies were complicated and the combination of the two different approaches made it all the more challenging.

So like all good project managers we went to our tool of choice (Microsoft Project, right?) and built a beautiful representation of the proposed rollout and product development to communicate the plan. While this was a valuable exercise to understand dependencies and forecasted resource demands, the look on our stakeholders’ eyes as they glanced at the Gantt chart said they needed something else: Legos.

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