HKSM

An organizational process asset is the company’s internal guidance and knowledge—such as policies, templates, and past project records—that teams use to do work. In Monitor Communications, it provides standards for formats, channels, cadence, and escalation so you can check compliance and improve results.

Key Points

• Serves as an input to Monitor Communications by providing established rules, templates, and historical references for stakeholder messaging.
• Includes communication policies, report and dashboard templates, approved channels and tools, glossaries and style guides, escalation paths, response-time standards, and archives of prior communications.
• Defines what “good communication” looks like in the organization so actual performance can be assessed consistently.
• Maintained at the organizational level; the project consumes it and proposes updates through lessons learned.

Purpose

Provide clear criteria and baselines to evaluate whether communications are timely, accurate, compliant, and reaching the right stakeholders. Reduce rework and risk by enforcing consistent formats, channels, and approvals. Enable faster monitoring and corrective action with predefined metrics, thresholds, and escalation routes.

How to Create

• Compile assets from past projects: sample reports, distribution lists, communication matrices, postmortems, and stakeholder feedback summaries.
• Standardize into usable artifacts: policies, playbooks, report templates, channel usage guidelines, terminology glossaries, and service-level expectations.
• Define measurement conventions: status color definitions, timing thresholds, satisfaction metrics, and communication KPIs.
• Establish governance: approval matrices for communications, confidentiality rules, regulatory guidance, and escalation procedures.
• Publish and store in a searchable, version-controlled repository accessible to project teams.
• During projects, capture lessons, sanitize examples, and submit improvements to the PMO or Communications Office for inclusion.

How to Use

• Before monitoring, identify relevant assets: required report formats, approved channels, response-time targets, and any compliance constraints.
• During monitoring, compare actual messages and reports to templates and standards to check accuracy, cadence, and audience coverage.
• Verify channel compliance, branding and terminology consistency, confidentiality requirements, and adherence to approval flows.
• Measure communication KPIs (e.g., delivery timeliness, read rates, stakeholder satisfaction) using defined metrics and thresholds.
• When gaps are found, apply the documented escalation path, adjust the communications management plan, and log lessons for future updates.

Ownership & Update Cadence

• Primary owners: PMO, Corporate Communications, Knowledge Management, and Compliance or Legal for regulated content.
• Updated at defined intervals such as quarterly or at phase gates, and ad hoc after audits, incidents, or major organizational changes.
• Projects contribute updates continuously via lessons learned and at closure; changes follow organizational change control.

Example

A software program monitors stakeholder updates against the company’s Communications Playbook. The playbook mandates a biweekly dashboard via the intranet portal, RAG status definitions, and an executive escalation matrix. Monitoring reveals some teams emailing spreadsheets late and using nonstandard RAG rules. The project switches to the standard dashboard template, publishes via the portal, retrains senders on status definitions, and records a lesson learned for future teams.

PMP Example Question

While monitoring communications, you notice weekly status reports vary in format and are sent through different channels. To standardize and assess compliance, what should you consult first?

1. Organizational process assets.
2. Enterprise environmental factors.
3. Communications management plan.
4. Work performance data.

Correct Answer: A — Organizational process assets.

Explanation: These assets contain the organization’s communication templates, policies, approved channels, and escalation paths. They provide the standards used to evaluate and align current communications. The communications management plan guides the project, but the standards come from organizational assets.