Communication is key
Drawings, models, symbols and mathematical shorthand are the language in which engineers communicate. Whether a project succeeds depends on whether this content reaches everyone involved without loss.
A project doesn't live on the best idea alone, but also on transporting content between different project partners without loss. That's why we listen and record what has been discussed, so that we become the project's memory – and because we know the current status, we can step in before a problem becomes expensive.
A team knows more than one team member: the Transactive Memory System describes how teams jointly store and retrieve knowledge – who knows what, and how this knowledge moves between those involved. We're happy to take on the task of organising this knowledge and bringing it to where it's needed in the project.
What experience shows
Many projects have shown us how important communication is. More than once, customers have come to us because coordination with the previous project partner hadn't worked, and more than once a collaboration has been extended because the communication was right. This experience matches the figures:
A study by the Project Management Institute on the role of communication reaches a clear conclusion: where projects lose money, poor communication is the most significant factor. Organisations that communicate effectively achieve their targets in 80% of their projects. If communication is inadequate, only 52% of projects achieve their original targets.
What this means in practice
We form a project team with you. We take on roles you haven't filled, or suggest which roles should be added. We create tools to support communication, so that all project partners have the same level of knowledge. An interactive project dashboard answers the most important questions centrally. Every question the dashboard already answers saves an email and the wait for a reply.
Our aim is communication reduced to the essentials: all key data – deadlines, milestones and the status of prototypes – are clearly displayed on the project dashboard, so that the basic information is compact and accessible to everyone involved.
Sources
- Project Management Institute – Pulse of the Profession: The Essential Role of Communications (2013) – communication as the most critical success factor.
- Daniel M. Wegner – Transactive Memory (1985) – how teams jointly store and retrieve knowledge.
IDEA e.U. · Determined Innovation