“The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate” ~ Joseph Priestley

In our experience, this is one of the significant benefits of the agile approach to project management.  Agile, with the recurring sprint meetings and constant involvement and participation by the project sponsor greatly facilitates the communications process. We can rely less upon detailed plan, when our key players are speaking daily with an uncensored and open dialog.

Viewing from a control system perspective, the daily reporting provides us with short forays down the wrong road before making the correction. Having the sponsor so connected allows for quick adaptation when things are not going according to the plan or when other opportunities are presented. Contrast this with the typical conventional project communication plan.  We have a description of the communications with the sponsor who are not often included in the day to day workings, the communications happens with either a lengthy dwell time, or when the project is under significant pressure.

Of course, nobody tells project managers to keep the project sponsor at distance or have long lines of communications that only open periodically. Any aspect of Agile that is of benefit, an easily be adapted to the conventional project management approach.