Integrating human communication strategies with project management for effective outcomes

Project managers' email in-boxes often contain hundreds of emails in which project related conversations are captured. The conversations are written records of team members' feedback regarding activities and their experiences performing these activities. They may also contain problems, expectations, emotions and lexical patterns (PEEL). Identifying these elements of project communication from email text and using them for the purpose of project management is a complex process. From the review of the existing literature of email analysis and project communication we identied four signicant shortcomings made up of: (i) lack of communication features, (ii) limited communication metrics, (iii) no link of email analysis to project monitoring, and (iv) limited understanding of how knowledge from email analysis can help improve functioning of a project. The study was set out to address the four shortcomings with the aim of addressing the need for a methodology that integrates knowledge from incoming email communication into project management practices. The research found that measurable characteristics of incoming communication through observations of both factual (technical) and personal (human) factors can generate signicant insight into indicators for the state of project health which in turn can be used to draw the project manager's attention to areas that worked well and areas that need consideration. In this study we developed a better understanding of various factors of incoming communi- cation in projects by in-depth analysis of email communication from ve projects with over a thousand emails. This included identication of multiple features embedded in emails, as well as coding and analysis of feature values for the purpose of identifying various measurable character- istics of incoming communication. This enabled implementation of communication metrics where \communication metrics" were linked to project \critical success factors". We demonstrate that by linking of two areas of research focus is on the observations of actors and their activities and experiences performing these activities. We were able to identify measurable characteristics of communication which could be used to provide signicant insights into indicators for the state of project health. We used this approach to generate communication reports which assisted the managers in identifying areas that worked or were critical to the project progress. Our theoretical contribution relates to the \Email Feedback Analysis" (EFA) model used for processing of project email communication in order to identify important elements of project activity useful for project managers; the insights into the e ectiveness of communication within a project as well as a metric for comparing communications across projects. Our model focuses on two types of information: information about team members (actors) activities and experiences while performing those activities in the context of communication and the same information in the context of project tasks. Our practical contributions relate to a framework and a vocabulary for the analysis of incoming communication, instructions of \how to code" incoming communication records in projects such as emails sent to project managers, \ProCommFeedback" software that can be used to simplify and expedite the process of communication analysis, and communication reports. This research aims to make a signicant contribution to conceptual understanding of the role that incoming communication plays in the context of project management as well as practical implementation of linking knowledge from incoming email communication with project success for the purpose of project management. Our approach has the potential to be highly benecial for large projects with many teams and resources (locally or globally dispersed) where project managers do not have su cient day-to-day contact with all their staff members to gauge their problems, feelings and emotions which are a strong indicator of sound project progress.Doctor of Philosoph