Step 5. One step at a time

Thursday, 23 April 2009 16:50 by Joel Macfarlane

This is the fifth post in our series on Successfully Implementing Project Management Software

We have all seen how people get very feature greedy when implementing software systems. Most new systems will perform many different functions, some of these new to staff members. The stats tell us, if you try to implement all of these features at once you will increase the scope of the project and therefore the likelihood of failure. This really applies to project management software which can be very multifaceted.

Simply put the reason you will fail with this 'all at once' approach is you will spook your staff. Most people don't like change, particularly if it comes with a perceived increase in work load. If you want people to use the system to do things they don't already do plan to release the system in steps. For example getting everyone to create project plans in your new application is a project in itself. If you do succeed at just this one thing I would consider that a massive success.

Once you have everyone using the project management software for the simple things it's not going to be difficult to slowly broaden the scope of its functionality. If you then want them to forecast, work request, time sheet..etc make those into subsequent projects and leave them well alone till people have fully adopted the first release.

I would suggest ordering the different phases of the project by how beneficial to staff they are and how easy they will be to roll out. Create a long term plan for the whole roll out and move towards that goal in incremental releases.

Just remember, if you have something complex to roll out.. do it once step at a time

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Tags:		implementing project management
Categories:		Project Management Software
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Step 4. Make it collaborative (but not to much)

Monday, 6 April 2009 22:41 by Joel Macfarlane

This is the fourth post in our series on Successfully Implementing Project Management Software

One of the best things about online project management tools is their ability to allow all users in a project group to collaborate. Oddly enough the worst thing about them is the fact that sometimes they rely to heavily on these people to keep the content up to date. Let me explain...

Good Collaboration

There is a reason people like social networks right? Its because they are fun and at the same time a good opportunity for people to read relevant social news and be heard. People don't see social networks as extra workload and for this reason I like the social network approach when applied to project management software. A good application should allow users to perform social activities like blog on projects and tasks, view and comment on others posts. This way your team will get involved, create a dialogue and give themselves a reason to keep using your software.

Collaboration Gone Bad

One of my pet hates is software that gobbles time from everyone in the business to keep it up to date. Many systems that give you the golden vision of managing your whole business require time sheeting, task and progress updating, status reporting, issue and risk, action updates etc...

Its just common sense that your users will hate this sort of system. Which means they won't use it, and then it will be out of date and useless.

Don't do this to yourself. Get a collaborative system but avoid systems that require massive amounts of input from everyone.

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