If you ask a project manager about what 90% percentage means for him, he would definitely answer “Communication”, as a rule of thumb the project manager spends 90% of his time in communication, this figure has been there for such a long time, and I think it has to be revisited, we have entered a new decade and it’s time to break the rules, the new figure has to be above that, maybe 95% or I would say 100%

Everything a project manager does is communication, first thing the team, sponsor, stakeholders, vendors, senior management, and the world is communication, they see they way you communicate before you use your technical skills to build a WBS or fast track the schedule, if you are a good communicator, this will leave a good impression from the very beginning, and if you have good communication skills you are very likely to excel in the easiest second half that is technical skills.

I do not know who first came up with this figure, but it has been very common amongst project managers, I personally believe that the new percentage of a project manager’s time spent on communication must be larger than 90%, because literally everything a project manager does is communication, we have 9 knowledge areas in PMBOK, one of them is communication, but in order to work on the other 8 knowledge areas you have to communicate, and in order to efficiently manage the five processes groups (Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitory, and Closing) you have to have solid communication skills, the following is just quick look at how communication is crucial for all project activities:

• Initiating: Like I said before, people see you communicating before they see the quality of your work and planning skills, during initiating you will need to communicate with project stakeholders and the sponsor in order to draft the project charter, no charter has to be released without the inputs from all stakeholders, you will need the help of stakeholders to identify inherent and preliminary risks, that you may not be aware at that early stage, using good communication skills you can gain stakeholders buy-in, remember it is not what you say it is how you say it
• Planning: some project mangers lock their doors and start working on the plans, they assign resources, set milestones, overlook some dependencies, etc. and when the plan is created they simply send it to the team and obviously the team has to follow the plan, this is one pattern of a real project failure, the project manager has to build the plan through communication, literally with everyone, the team has to be part of the planning phase to provide estimates, foresee potential risks, assumptions, and dependencies, stakeholders expectations have to be reflected in the plans, sponsor’s promises have to be kept. No good project plan can be built by one person, even if that person is the project manager, meetings, brainstorming sessions, questionnaires, conference calls, research, communication with vendors, etc. are all required to build the plan and these inputs can be solicited through active communication with everyone, and this will lead to a bought-into plan that is a crucial success factor, you will also need to have rapport with functional managers to get resource commitments
• Executing & Monitoring: this where the project manager gets some relief after he has finished the project plan, in Executing the project manager will have to communicate with all stakeholders and working team to ensure that the plan is followed, rather than shelved, the project manager will have to motivate, coach, report status, develop status and progress reports based on team member’s inputs, resolve issues and conflicts, enforce ground rules, confront social loafers ( for more information about social loafers you can read my post about Social Loafing for Project Managers ), develop the project team by addressing gaps in each team member’s skill set, identify risks based on inputs from team members and stakeholders, some risks related to technology can never be identified by the project manger, and only through communication he can get to proactively know about those risks, and in turn identify corrective actions to resolve issues and risks, and ask the team how to prevent this kind of issues by working on finding preventive actions, the list of areas require communication skills can exceed 100s and so I will just stop right here!
• Closing: If you pay attention to this stage it means you are a genuine project manager, this is the most ignored stage for a lot of projects, and actually it requires special kind of sincere and courageous communication, during this stage you should ideally have a post implementation review session(s) and this would be constructive only if you involve project’s stakeholders, you can conduct anonymous surveys or let stakeholders fill a questionnaire, also a Lessons Learned session(s) would be great, the lessons learned sessions is as forgotten as the closing stage, you will need to appreciate the value of lessons learned, and remember that it will not only benefit the organization and future projects, it also will benefit you as a project manager to avoid similar mistakes in your future career.

I am not aware who first proposed the 90% but I am sure it has to increase, you also what do you think?