What is the scope of a project communications role in projects today?  Many projects put the boundaries at just developing and sending simple communications via newsletter or emails, while others projects take a more complete view and include communications for all of the project stakeholders.  I have seen project team members who do not want to relinquish any control over their engagement with the project's customers and stakeholders.  Their desire for total control, however, creates a communications strategy and deployment that is not integrated and could lead to project failure.

Where do you draw the line?  For the best chance of success, we should strive toward an integrated approach including 1) developing guidelines for all message categories, 2) establish documentation style guide standards , and 3) create a document management, storage and distribution procedure including version control, approval process, and ownership.

Many projects use similar types of documents to document and communicate planning or control information.  One important aspect for all physical or virtual documents is to develop a document management plan and methodology.  This can be accomplished by using a document database containing all documentation.  The document database can include the following key fields:

Document Name
Document Owner
Document Location
Update Schedule
Distribution
Archive Location
Destruction Plan

I like to keep in mind that documents are a part of what we communicate with project team members, project management, project champions, project customers and all others who influence or are affected by the project.  That's a broad scope which demands a broad document management plan.

What are your thoughts?