TPM Podcast with Rhea – Episode II Part II

Mario Gerard: Hello, and welcome to the TPM podcast with your host, Mario Gerard. This is part two of the second series with Rhea, where we are talking about how you run L scale programs. If you haven't listened to part one of how you run large-scale programs, definitely check it out before you start this particular podcast, because this is a continuation of that. Hope you enjoy it. See you on the other side. Bye. One of the things to keep in mind when we design how we communicate in a log scale program. So, we spoke a lot about communication. But how do you design a communication plan for a large-scale program. Rhea Frondozo: So, you know, I think what it comes down to is making sure that you understand who you need to communicate with at what frequency at what level of communication, for what purpose and using what mechanism. So that's a lot of things I just said, right? But let's break that down. You're going to have a variety of different stakeholders who are going to need different levels of communication at different frequencies. So, if you, for example, are communicating with executives, you're going to need to be able to produce, you know, very concise executive summaries. Maybe it's going to be in a report or maybe it's going to be an executive status meeting, and it's going to be at whatever frequency that they feel that they need to be informed at, versus when you are actually managing the program with people who are say, POCs, the point of context, you're going to be wanting to have maybe status meetings where you're working through issues that they bring up. Maybe you're going to have a program tracking page where you're tracking the different, you know, initiatives that teams are working on. And you have a way that you can gather the variety of statuses that they bring to the table and risks that they bring to the table that you can discuss as a team. Or maybe there are people who just need to be informed, and they're not maybe working on the project, but maybe you want something like a newsletter where you're keeping people informed on a regular basis of what's happening with your program. Should they, you know, have an ask that comes to them later, they're not in the dark about why this is coming. So, there's definitely a lot of different potential for communication mechanisms, through emails, newsletters, status meetings, Wiki pages. It really just comes down to making an assessment of, like I said, who needs to know what, when and how do you deliver that. Mario Gerard: Yeah, I think it's a very complex, you know, we've tried to do it with some, some kind of confluence pages, which has the objective, the mission, the risks that we are going through right now and all the deliverables and milestones and the people who are responsible. So, it's kind of a table which shows who has what milestones hit when they're going to hit those milestones. Are they red, green, or yellow for those milestones? So, somebody can take a look at it at one view and see like, you know, where we are in those plans. And I think cadence is really important in all of these things. So, you have executor level meetings where you're just giving them status or you're sending it to them via email. Then you have different levels of meetings with different types of stakeholders across the board. So, it's kind of important for you to design that and to recalibrate it. Rhea Frondozo: Right, right. Mario Gerard: You have to recalibrate. Rhea Frondozo: Right. Cause I think one of the things to mention is that depending on what stage you are in a program, the frequency of communication to your stakeholders can change. In the beginning you may spend a lot of time talking to your executive sponsors or the leadership t...