5 Tips to Increase Team Adoption of Your New Project Management Solution
Getting your team to adopt a new project management solution can be tricky, especially if they’re used to using another solution that they’re familiar with. However, it doesn’t have to be as difficult as you think.
In this article, we will share five tips that we have found to help assist in making teams cooperate in making the transition successfully.
1) Set Team Adoption Expectations
First things first. There’s no better way to get your team on board with a new project management solution than by setting expectations of stakeholders from day one. Let them know exactly how you plan on using it and what they can expect as a result. In addition, remember that any change is not going to happen overnight. It will take time for people in your company to adjust—you may even find resistance in certain areas. So keep an open dialogue with your team and be ready for some growing pains as people become accustomed.
2) Establish Realistic Goals
When rolling out a new project management solution, make sure you establish realistic goals for team adoption. You may be able to convince some members of your team to buy in right away, while others may need more time to adjust. This can often be attributed to varying levels of comfort with technology, or even knowledge—particularly if it’s a new or upcoming tool that many haven’t had much experience with.
3) Sustain a Gradual Introduction
Part one of enabling a gradual introduction is to have a simple to use yet robust solution that offers limited views and permissions to specific persons and roles. By doing so, you make it easier for your team to focus on what matters to them and slowly but surely learn how to work with your new project management solution.
When you get a project portfolio management (PPM) solution, like Proggio, which is an all-in-one solution with shared data for all users, you can seamlessly accomplish company-wide adoption, where every stakeholders’ activity within the platform automatically updates every view (i.e., portfolio, project, tasks, resources). This is because it is built to be simple, with tools and views for every stakeholder depending on their roles and permissions, with the benefits of unlimited user access.
Part two of this is to gradually introduce more tools as users become familiar with your company’s chosen solution. Depending on how you set up roles and permissions, you could have an easy time rolling out a new solution that is manageable, simple to use, and uses stakeholders’ updates to automatically update your project portfolio view.
4) Keep Team Accountable
One thing many project management solutions have in common is that they’re not natively connected to one another. Even if you have an enterprise solution, like Jira or Asana, team members are forced to use different tools for different projects.
And using multiple tools with incomplete visibility can be a major roadblock for collaboration and accountability. This is why we recommend using a PPM solution that is both a single source of truth for the entire company to share the same information with one another and can enable collaboration over the portfolio within the application. Proggio does just that with their social feed.
Proggio’s feed encourages team adoption of your new project management solution and gets people moving toward a shared goal. Among other benefits to the feed include, making it quick and easy to get updated about what is taking place in the space involved, getting them to slowly be more comfortable with using the PPM solution, and keeping them in the app–no need to go to other solutions to get informed, create reports, or update their superiors, for example.
In other words, Proggio provides instant project transparency among colleagues working in the same space and allows for team collaboration and accountability across all business functions.
5) Use Pre-made Project Templates
One way to get your team engaged with a new project management solution is by using project templates that allow them to dive in and start using it. If your new solution doesn’t include pre-made project templates, you can create one for your team by bringing together all of their common projects (or, at least, most of them) in one place. You might want to include a description of how each template will work as well as areas for notes or attachments.
Proggio also has built-in templates for common use-cases in-app, making your start in Proggio even more simple.
Conclusion
Team adoption is a vital part of any new software launch, but getting employees on board isn’t always easy. From things like resistance and naysayers to hurdles around training, there are many factors involved in team adoption. If you’re having trouble getting your team on board with your new project management solution, use these tips to get the ball rolling in the right direction. This will help make them feel more invested in its success and encourage them to use it after launch.
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