Communication Among Stakeholders And Project Success : A Case Study Of The Community Development Support Project, Rulindo District (2004-2010)

Abstract

It is unquestionable that communication among stakeholders is increasingly becoming a topic of much concern and its importance to project success is much more crucial. Projects which are becoming much more complex on one hand and the need for projects for any country or organization to develop on the other hand contribute to this importance. However, the challenge of poor and insufficient communication among stakeholders remains an obstacle to project success. It is against this background that this study on Communication among Stakeholders and Project Success: The Case Study of the Community Development Support Project, Rulindo district (2004-2010) was carried out to solve this problem. The study sought to examine the contribution of communication among stakeholders to project success and whether the project communication plan used by the Community Development Support Project of Rulindo met all the requirements for a standard project communication plan and whether it allowed feedback from stakeholders. This study is of significant importance because it availed a literature that can help project stakeholders to communicate effectively. By reading it, they will also understand that to make a decision, one must first have complete and clear information. Many scholars wrote about concepts related to communication among stakeholders and project success. They also discussed the importance of communication among stakeholders to project success. The researcher noticed that this literature needed to be reviewed in order to include enough information on the contribution of communication among stakeholders to project success which was lacking. To achieve the purpose of the study, different methods and techniques were used to collect data that were processed into information used in this research. The data collected were presented, interpreted and analysed by the use of tables. The researcher got these data from different respondents, books, reports and online documents which he organised to get useful information. The findings of this study revealed that communication can make or break a project. When there was good communication the project registered higher achievements, where communication was poor project achievements were lower. Communication which was used during the project was in general effective and contributed to the project success. However, some communication problems did not allow the project to fully achieve its objectives. Communication problems that affected project achievements were lack of detailed project communication plan, lack of open communication among project stakeholders, lack of trainings on effective communication during the project, unstable connection, the sorry state of roads, cultural and language barriers, among others. The project was also found to achieve outstanding achievements despite these communication problems.