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Next meeting: Friday June 20, 2008 at 2pm Downtown Crossing. 

Ideas on what to include in a communication strategy:

1. objectives
2. target audience or stakeholders (internal and external)
3. message you want to convey THE WHAT
4. rationale THE WHY
5. tools (existing and new) THE HOW
6. resources you need
7. time line THE WHEN (frequency)
8. lessons learned

June 20, 2008

HypotheticalHypothetical for Thought

Team X has been working on an application and the big release is coming up.  Many of the company's applications will integrate with this service and be dependent on it.  The Team makes the decision that the product needs to be "rock solid", because if it goes down, so do all the apps that are using it.  The company as a whole does not do any standard quality assurance, and the Team believes that this is an issue.  They feel that due diligence includes QA for this service as well as other products being developed across the organization.  They want to begin investigating tools since testing would need to begin asap.  How should their needs and concerns be communicated?  How should the tool selection be conducted and a decision made?

Ideas on what to include in a communication strategy:

1. objectives
2. target audience or stakeholders (internal and external)
3. message you want to convey THE WHAT
4. rationale THE WHY
5. tools (existing and new) THE HOW
6. resources you need
7. time line THE WHEN (frequency)
8. lessons learned

Group feedback:

• Identify the SCOPE of the issue
• Identify a subject matter expert - internal or external
  •     Get the right people involved - look outside your own team
• Be clear about what you need and for how long
• Communicate this to your manager
  • They should communicate back to the leadership - people who make the final decisions
  • Socializing the problem
  • This is how you get resources and communicate who is doing what

• Manager can step in when there is a resource constraint or when there is cost associated with the problem
• Clearly identify who is responsible for what
  • Decisions
  • Work
  • Prioritizing

• Make recommendations based on research by the group - be able to support your argument
• Sometimes making a decision is more important than the decision itself
• Hard to calculate ROI on much of what we do
  • things like the MIT reputation are immeasurable
• Resistance to having things go "higher up the chain"
• SME and manager can present recommendation to leadership team - opportunity for feedback
• Be accountable
• Sometimes a recommendation or decision goes against policy or the policy hasn't been clearly defined yet "road block to decisions"
• Is there a stigma to "good enough"?  Do we shoot too high at first?  How do we manage expectations?
• Neglecting the "let's try it" scenario - experimentation or pilot allows for better requirements gathering
• Talk to the customer
• Resistance to raising expectations
• Don't make promises - focus on the business problem you are trying to solve
• Don't avoid conflict

ISDA Communication Strategy v3ISDA Communication Strategy v1.ppt