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**Table of Contents**
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**Create Communications Strategy & plan**
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As your Cloud Migration approaches, the stakes are high for your communications team to ensure messaging is solidified and everything is ready to be deployed throughout your transition. It's early in the planning phases that developing a communications strategy is important, and how well you execute it could be the determining factor in how well the transition is received and behaviors adopted by your audience.

The purpose of the communications strategy is to provide a thoughtful, structured approach to delivering the right messages to the right people at the right time throughout the course of your cloud migration.

### **Why**

Creating a communications strategy and plan ensures all the necessary communication activities are accounted for. With this visibility, it is easier to see how the “story” will unfold for the audience groups and allows you to set deadlines for the work effort.

*   Communications promote organizational change awareness, which is the first step in getting a group of people to embrace new ways of working
*   What’s in it for me –WIIFM. What people know and how they come to know it—is an important part of cultural change
*   Communications motivate future state behavior as well as behavior to support the transition
*   Reduces uncertainty and minimizes resistance to and risk of rejection of changes
*   Assures key stakeholders have the ability to drive awareness, understanding and commitment across the stages of migration

### **Who to involve  
**

Executive Sponsors, Migration Project Leader, Migration Change Leader, Internal Communications and HR. Communications from executive leaders is key to reinforcing the value and benefits of migrating to a cloud solution.

### **When to use it  
**

Communications Strategy and Planning efforts start at the beginning of your cloud migration effort. Typically, during the migration assessment phase. During this phase, gaps and change impacts are identified as well as the audiences impacted by the migration.

### **Inputs and Outputs  
**

|   **INPUTS**   |   **OUTPUTS**   |
| --- | --- |
|   *   Strategic Vision *   Business Case *   Stakeholder Analysis *   Communication Vehicles Assessment *   Migration Change Impacts   |   *   Communication Guiding Principles *   Vehicle and Media Analysis *   Message Identification *   Stakeholder Prioritization Matrix *   Communication Matrix *   Communication Activities (Workplan/Approach)        |

  

### **Instructions**

1.  Understand the Communications Development Process. In order to create a Communications Strategy, first time practitioners need to familiarize themselves with the Communications development process as outlined below. The process starts with a communications needs assessment, direct input from the cloud migration strategic vision, the business case and the stakeholder analysis. These instructions will focus on the steps needed to create the communication strategy document.
2.  Develop Communications Strategy & Plan
    
    1.  Collect information from the Cloud Migration Readiness Assessment, Business Case and Stakeholder Analysis
        
    2.  Conduct interviews with executive project sponsor and project leadership team to get their perspective and insights into the project. Ask for clarification and validate project goals and objectives as needed
        
    3.  Conduct interviews with internal communications teams to understand communication cycles and appropriate vehicles
        
    4.  Conduct interviews with HR to understand potential impacts to future state roles and setting guidelines in how to best partner with them throughout the migration effort
        
    5.  Conduct interviews with functional process area leaders to understand specifics for their area or function
        
    6.  Conduct interviews with outward facing groups, such as sales to understand impacts to customers and suppliers
        
    7.  Evaluate all documentation and information and follow-up with key stakeholders as needed for additional input
        
    8.  Build your Communications Strategy deck following the structure outlined below:
        
        1.  Communications Objectives
            
        2.  Communications Guiding Principles
            
        3.  Communications Vehicles
            
        4.  Key Communications Messaging
            
        5.  Target Audiences
            
        6.  Communications Activities (Workplan/Approach)
            
        7.  Organizational roles and accountabilities
            
3.  Conduct a Communications Planning Workshop
    
    1.  The purpose of this workshop is to create a communications plan that identifies key messages, maps stakeholder groups to the messages, identifies media types and frequency for each stakeholder group, and identifies timing of messages. Optimally, the same group of people that participated in the stakeholder assessment workshop should participate in the communication workshop. This way the foundation that is developed during the stakeholder assessment can be leveraged during this workshop.

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