Lessons in communication, critical thinking and documentation
Introduction to the List of Terms
Project Communications Management is one of the 10 Knowledge Areas of the PMI®‘s A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide). Your proficiency at written communication plays a big role in your overall effectiveness in project communications.
Your List of Terms is the first document you have to create in the Practical Certification Programme in Project Management, and it’s an important document in your career.
Communication, critical thinking and documentation
Along with the ability to handle money, communication skills sit highest on the list of what employers and recruiters are typically looking for in project managers.
Critical thinking is a key to mastering clear communication.
And, whether you end up as a project manager, a project administrator, a project scheduler or in any other major role in Project Management, you’re often going to be communicating via documents.
Most Project Management standards have a section devoted to the management of documents. In PRINCE2®, for example, this is handled as a part of Configuration Management. In the PMBOK® Guide, we find no fewer than 18 Project Management Plan documents and 38 Project Documents!
It’s pretty clear, then, that if you want to be good at Project Management, you have to be good at documented communication.
The exercises which you do using your List of Terms are designed to foster critical thinking, and to sharpen your communication skills. Inevitably, you will also learn about document control, and about the technical aspects of document editing.
You, the author
The List of Terms which you create during your studies is a dynamic, living document. You’ll keep adding to it, updating it, changing and tweaking it. Eventually, it may grow into an important reference which you share with others in an organisation where you run projects.
See, on the average real-life project, you’re not going to walk into a nice neat place with document templates which have been well designed to support streamlined processes. You’re unlikely to find expertly-designed forms which you simply have to fill in according to the instructions of an organised employer. Very often, you’re going to have to make this up as you go along, or work with other people to adapt what has been given to you to make it more effective.
Getting started with your List of Terms
In the Project Management Concepts course, we provide a template for your List of Terms, but this is just to get you started. If you wish, you could use some other kind of software instead, such as a spreadsheet.
Ultimately, you may work in an environment where you implement a termbase or glossary in the form of a database. Working in a relatively simple format (such as the Word document template which we provide) will help you appreciate the value of a more robust, purpose-built system, which has evolved from what you are about to begin. If you’re already au fait with easy-to-use databases such as Airtable, consider starting there to give you a better path of evolution.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system. – John Gall
About the video
This video has been designed to help you understand how to use your List of Terms in the context of where you want to go, knowing that by working on this single artefact, you’re learning to hone your skills in all sorts of ways needed for effective Project Management—critical thinking, classification, and proficiency in documented communication.
Later in the Project Management Concepts course you will also learn how we use our advice to explain your understanding of a term as if to a 13-year-old. This is a technique to help you improve your oral communication skills.
Also recommended: 6 steps to make Project Management concepts stick
