Why one row per audience rather than per meeting?

Because a meeting is an answer and the audience is the question. Starting from meetings preserves whatever was already in the calendar, including the ones nobody needs.

How much communication is too much?

When a report is not acted on. That is a sharper test than length or frequency, and applying it usually removes more than trimming ever does.

Why does this matter more on larger projects?

Because channels grow faster than the team. Six people have fifteen possible pairs and twelve have sixty six, so the coordination overhead rises faster than headcount and somebody has to decide who talks to whom about what.

Project delivery

Communications plan

One row per audience rather than per meeting, holding what they need, why they need it, the format, the frequency, and whether it is pushed, pulled or interactive. The direction column is what stops everything becoming a report.

What it is

A communications plan built from the calendar records what already happens. Built from audiences, it asks who needs what, and the meetings fall out of that instead of driving it.

The direction column carries most of the value. Push is sent whether people asked or not and produces no evidence anybody read it. Pull is made available for people to come and get, which removes the interruption that generates most status reporting. Interactive is a conversation, which is expensive and the only form that confirms understanding. Using push for everything is what produces a project where senior stakeholders say they were unaware of key decisions while others say the volume is excessive.

The second column is where the work is. What they need to know is easy to fill in badly, and the test is to write what the reader will do differently having received it. Anything nobody acts on can come out, and that is usually where the volume complaint originates.

When to use it

Stakeholders say they are simultaneously over informed and unaware of decisions.
You are sending one report to everybody and it is satisfying nobody.
The project has grown past the point where undirected communication works.
A stakeholder register shows engagement gaps and you need somewhere for the work to live.

The columns

Audience
What they need to know
Why they need it
Format
Frequency
Direction
Owner
Channel
Next

The template

Audience	What they need to know	Why they need it	Format	Frequency	Direction	Owner	Channel	Next
Sponsor	Decisions needed, forecast against the envelope, top three risks	Holds the budget and answers for the benefit	One page, sent before the meeting	Fortnightly	Interactive	Project manager	Standing meeting, agenda circulated first	2026-02-18
Steering group	Milestone status, decisions above tolerance, change requests	Authorises anything beyond the project manager's limits	Six slides, decisions on the first	Monthly	Interactive	Project manager	Scheduled meeting	2026-02-24
Delivery team	What is next, what changed, what is blocked	Cannot plan without it, and finds out anyway if we do not say	Board plus a short conversation	Daily	Interactive	Delivery lead	Standing coordination, board visible	Daily
Operations, North and South	What is coming, when, and what they have to do to be ready	Will run the output and can stop go live if unready	Working session with the increment on screen	Every cycle	Interactive	Change lead	Rotating session, two groups	2026-02-13
Regulatory affairs	Design decisions touching a control, and evidence as it is built	Signs the compliance position and cannot reconstruct it later	Written record, plus attendance at design reviews	Per design decision	Push	Solution lead	Shared folder, review invitations	On decision
Finance business partner	Spend to date against forecast, commitments made	Controls the budget, needs no narrative	Two figures and a variance note	Monthly	Push	Project manager	Email	2026-03-01
Wider department	That the change is coming and roughly when	Rumour fills the gap otherwise	Three paragraphs, plain language	Monthly	Push	Change lead	Department newsletter	2026-02-27
Anyone who asks	Current status, without interrupting the team	Removes the interruption that produces most reporting	Board and burnup, always current	Continuous	Pull	Delivery lead	Wall display and dashboard	Continuous

One row per audience, not per meeting. A plan built from the calendar records what already happens. A plan built from audiences asks who needs what, and the meetings fall out of it.

The three directions

Push. Sent to people whether they asked or not. Email, a report, a newsletter. Cheap to produce and no evidence anybody read it.
Pull. Made available for people to come and get. A dashboard, a board on a wall, a shared folder. Removes the interruption that produces most status reporting, since somebody who can see the state of the work does not need to ask.
Interactive. A conversation, in a room or on a call. Expensive and the only one that confirms understanding, so reserve it for what needs agreeing rather than what needs telling.

The common failure is using push for everything. A comprehensive weekly report sent to forty people is simultaneously too much for the senior readers and not enough for the ones who needed a decision, which is how a project ends up with stakeholders who say both at once.

Why the second column is the work

What they need to know is easy to fill in badly. Everything is not an answer, and neither is a project update.

Write it as what this person will do differently having read it. The sponsor needs decisions and a forecast because they act on both. The finance partner needs two figures because that is all they act on. Operations needs to see the increment because their action is getting ready, and a document will not tell them whether they are.

Anything nobody acts on can come out. That is usually where the volume complaint comes from.

Channels grow faster than the team

A group of six has fifteen possible pairs. A group of twelve has sixty six. The formula is n times n minus one, over two, and it is the reason communication overhead grows faster than headcount and why a plan matters more the larger the project gets.

The practical consequence is that undirected communication does not scale. Somebody has to decide who talks to whom about what, and this sheet is that decision written down.

Informing and engaging are different jobs

Telling somebody what has been decided is informing. Bringing them in before the decision so their input shapes it is engaging. Both belong in a plan and they are not interchangeable, and treating an engagement need as an information need is how a stakeholder who was told everything still objects at the end.

Where the stakeholder register shows a gap between current and desired engagement, this plan is where the work to close it lives.

Reviewing it

Check it whenever the register changes. New stakeholders arrive as the design takes shape, and a plan written at initiation is addressing the audience the project had in month one.

Also check what is being read. A report nobody opens is not communication, and the honest response is to stop producing it rather than to send it more often.

Questions people ask

Why one row per audience rather than per meeting?: Because a meeting is an answer and the audience is the question. Starting from meetings preserves whatever was already in the calendar, including the ones nobody needs.
How much communication is too much?: When a report is not acted on. That is a sharper test than length or frequency, and applying it usually removes more than trimming ever does.
Why does this matter more on larger projects?: Because channels grow faster than the team. Six people have fifteen possible pairs and twelve have sixty six, so the coordination overhead rises faster than headcount and somebody has to decide who talks to whom about what.