From Robert Kelly, PMP: Recently, Nike took heat over their Tiger Woods Winning Takes Care of Everything advertisement. I understand why folks were taken back by this, but I couldn’t help thinking how this type of reaction occurs in project management as well. Before I lose you, I am not saying people will forgive unethical behavior; rather they will forgive changes and hiccups along the way.
As the number of Project Management Institute certified project managers swells and Agile certifications gain credence, their accompanying acronyms and buzzwords seem to grow exponentially. Unfortunately, projects success rates are not. My colleagues on LinkedIn and Twitter all have opinions about why so many projects fail and what they would have done instead. Since the majority of reports I've read claim the failure rate of projects hovers around 53%, it appears I'm always talking with the 47% that get it right.
Professional Project Managers, the ones with the capital P and capital M, are quick throw around lingo like WBS, CPI, retrospective, and burn down charts. Considering their industry failure rate,many may be trying to cover themselves, impress others, or perhaps impress themselves. Their problem is that no one cares: not about methodology, not about Gantt charts or lag time, or other terminology, and not about skills. At the end, all anyone cares about are results.
I am an avid supporter of project management tools, techniques and software. I recognize their importance in managing and driving effective projects. However, even the most elegant project cannot succeed if clients do not adopt the results.
End-user adoption of new technology is frequently a key roadblock to an implementation’s success and also the most critical factor for generating return on investment.
Daniel O’Connell, Gartner Research Director
As a project manager, there are few things more frustrating than gathering solid requirements and managing a project well, only to see it flop upon launch. Afterward, most clients will not say, "Don’t worry that no one uses the new platform. You had beautiful reports. Your budget estimates were right on target." On the flip side, if you run a touch over budget; if you take an extra month to complete the project, then everyone uses the new platform, you have a success.
Winning takes care of everything.
Keys to Winning
Here are a few items that can increase end user adoption of any project:
- Robust Discovery: Gather every stakeholder's requirements.
Spend time with your project team at the outset. How were they assigned to the project? What are their work needs, load and style? Do personal interests, for example, career aspirations, come into play? - Cast Vision: Illustrate the advantages each beneficiary will receive. One size will not fit all so customize for each group or individual.
Can you effectively cast a vision of how you will manage this project, your expectations from the project and people, and the impact on the organization and people? - Communicate with clarity and transparency across the project timeline.
It is the project manager's job to communicate clearly and translate project lingo into easy to understand language. - Keep your communications compact and consistent.
Every project requires concise, effective communication. An organized, flexible, and collaborative platform will be an important asset. No one enjoys bouncing between multiple systems to read emails and updates to figure out what they are supposed to do, let alone by what date. - Test, Teach, Support : Test, teach or train, and support all the project participants right up to the launch, then retest, test, train, and support users and other post-project stakeholders.
Audition project concepts and read your team's reactions. Assess participants' understandingly observing and asking questions. If people become disconnected, teach them what they need to know and support them along the way.
Project managers who spend too much time debating methodology or creating the latest and greatest reports will lose team members who want to work and get things done.
Project Managers get in the way, they are like border collies [trying to] keep the herd in-line.
During the project, few participants actually care about the Gantt chart, lag time, and other project management stuff. They want to execute! After the project, when people use your new platform, they will not ask "Did the project manager follow an Agile process?" No one will care, let alone remember. As for any problems you had along the way, adoption absolves all. Winning takes care of everything.
Author Robert Kelly PMP is a contributing writer to the Smartsheet blog. He is the managing partner of Kelly Project Solutions and co-founder of #PMChat, a community of project and program managers.