Free communication plan template

A communication plan keeps stakeholders updated with specific, targeted messaging as progress is made, ensuring smooth communication during critical moments.

Make a communication plan template in Confluence for free.

Creating a communication plan in Confluence offers a streamlined and collaborative approach to managing project communications. A communication plan helps manage risks, enhances tracking and evaluation, and increases efficiency by standardizing the flow of information. Whether you're communicating project status or resource planning details, it provides a systematic approach to keep everyone on the same page.

Centralizing your communication plan in Confluence ensures that all team members and stakeholders are consistently informed. This enables better decision-making and fosters effective collaboration throughout the project. Learn more about what a communication plan is, its benefits, and how to create one in Confluence.

What is a communication plan template?

A communication plan template is a structured framework that helps you initiate a task or project. It outlines how to deliver various communications, including meeting agendas, project timelines, project risk management updates, and enterprise risk management information. This template clarifies what information you need to share, who the recipients are, and the frequency of communication. Effective communication templates should include elements to engage stakeholders, like content types, smart links, and macros.

Benefits of using a communications plan template

Ensures clarity and consistency

Providing your audience with clear and consistent information and using a standard format at predictable intervals keeps everyone on the same page. It also allows them to ask questions and provide input, helping teams clarify and simplify information in a repeatable format.

Facilitates stakeholder engagement

When stakeholders receive consistent updates, they rely on that information for decision-making and provide input, including requests for additional information or follow-through on action items. A communication plan template establishes a systematic approach to interacting with stakeholders, providing a foundation for continuous communication improvement.

Streamlines communication

Understanding what your audience needs is the basis of good communication. Too much data can overwhelm them, causing them to lose critical information. A communication plan template helps define and streamline messaging by delivering targeted, usable information.

Enhances tracking and evaluation

Tracking and monitoring communication can be challenging. A communication plan template helps standardize the information you share, making it easier to evaluate its effectiveness and identify areas for improvement.

Manages risks

Communicating risks, their potential impact, and mitigation plans can help secure stakeholder agreement and keep team members aware and engaged, ensuring smoother project execution. Prepared stakeholders can provide critical input early, allowing the team to move from problem to solution quicker and more effectively.

Increases efficiency

A project communication plan template provides a ready-made structure that allows teams to quickly identify the most important information, audience, and level of detail. Instead of spending time creating a plan from scratch, teams can move efficiently from definition to adaptation and adoption.

Use Confluence to create a communication plan

Confluence brings everyone together in a connected workspace, providing the tools to create, edit, and share information collaboratively. It allows teams to transition real-time information from workflow management, project phases, risk assessment, or resource planning to standardized communication with the team and stakeholders. With its intuitive interface, you can create a sample communication plan and easily update it in real-time for improvement. Then, when you’re ready, you can easily share your communication plan with the company.

No matter your team size, keep all of your work, company knowledge, and project pages centralized in one location. Easily find documents, templates, or other important information with Confluence’s AI-powered search function.

Make a communication plan template in Confluence for free.

How to use a communication plan template

Define objectives

If you’re communicating risks and want stakeholders to have resources available to execute a mitigation plan, include the likelihood and impact of the risk. For example, if the customer changes the requirements of a feature that will result in new design documentation, your communication plan should include adjusted timelines for testing and release.

Outline key messages and appropriate channels

Understand your audience and what information is appropriate for them. For example, what you include in a customer meeting agenda can be very different from one for a product development team. For customers, information might be high-level and focus on benefits and timelines. In contrast, the agenda for the development team may be more detailed, including potential roadblocks and specific project details.

Assign roles and responsibilities

Identify who is responsible for each element of your communication plan. For instance, if the information involves risks to the project, assign an individual who will communicate risk status and mitigation plans. Assign project status information to the project manager, customer acceptance outcomes to the product manager, etc. Each communication point in your plan should have an owner responsible for the content.

Develop a timeline

Maintaining a standard communication plan requires some effort. Develop a timeline for this work and build it into the business process. Depending on what you’re communicating, information may be readily accessible, such as project status updates. Some information may require careful review from the executive team before distribution. Determine the time it will take to complete the communication plan based on the nature of the information, including the sequence of steps and schedule.

Monitor and adjust

A communication plan is only helpful if the audience can understand it and it provides the correct information at the right level. As business requirements change, the information you provide may also change. Expect to fine-tune your communication plan based on feedback and ongoing evaluation.

Related templates

Meeting agenda

A meeting agenda template augments the communication plan by organizing topics, activities, and objectives.

Stakeholder communications

Use a stakeholder communications template to define your audience, communication needs, and methods.

Incident communication

An incident communication template clarifies issues, assigns roles and responsibilities, and builds trust.

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