The video ends with ends with 10 short tips on adopting project management solutions. You can download the “infographic” used (PNG 4.2MB, JPG 3.6MB , PDF 118KB).

Transcript

I’ve been helping companies adopting project management software for almost 10 years, both online and by on site consulting. Sometimes the adoption process succeeded, sometimes it didn’t, and in time I’ve been noticing patterns, which I’ll try to share.

While I’ve been proposing a specific software tool, most of the time success or failure does not depend crucially on the tool, but on people’s attitudes. Many of these observations could work for a group that decides to use a shared Excel file or a physical board, the simplest possible project management solutions.

All my points are about how to introduce a tool in such a way to get people to have working objectives more in order. Often tool introduction generate instead a yet-more-control with less recognition feeling.

Now I’ll present some failure patterns, then some success patterns, and we’ll end with a list of short tips. We’ll be visually helped by an infographic which you can view online and download.

Failure patterns

“Users don’t use it.”

In my experience the first cause of project management software adoption failure is not the discovery that the solution chosen does not do this or that, but is the fact that “users don’t use it”. Managers have to acknowledge that: “after a while people simply don’t use the solution”.

This is danger number one. How to avoid this? The best way is to ask from the start: “Is it realistic that everyone I want to use the solution will actually use this solution? Is it simple enough? Is it fast enough? Are there visible advantages?”.

“We’ll start when everything is in place.”

“Users don’t use it” is a posteriori failure, but sometimes failure starts before the solution is adopted, when the idea is: “We’ll start when everything is in place”, which most often means “We’ll never start.”.

“Partial data is useless.”

“We need everyone, always to use this. Partial data is useless”. It’s a case of superstitious belief in complete data coverage, which is a debatable concept. But actually partial data is way better than no data.

“Software replaces management.”

“It will be the software doing the monitoring for us”; this is the belief that software replaces management.

“Let’s migrate current methods to the new system.”

“Let’s insert all of [MS project files data] [Excel data] [put here any other tool] data in the new tool and start from that”, which implies that bad habits forced by in time by old tools get projected on the new system, which will be surely “unsatisfactory”. Here the greatest opportunity is missed, the one for reform. Introducing new tools is an opportunity for reform. This reaction is a combination of “fear of changes” and “not ready now” syndrome.

Another mistake is to think about what the new tool may do for the company before thinking about “How much can I ask my fellow workers? How not to make it feel as a burden?”. Start small, start simple, pick a leading team, and then again and again I’ve seen the users come to the guy who introduced the tool and ask for more.

Success patterns

Present the new tool differently to different people

Present the centralized formalization of working practices differently to different groups. The way you present the software to IT is different from how you present it to agents. Ask different things and present different advantages to different people. You need information from everyone, how you get is not that important.

A moment of change

Introducing new solutions is an opportunity for discussions and not for impositions. It is an opportunity for reforming practices where it is possible. Not being asked for opinions is one of the main causes of dissatisfaction at work.

Quality helps everyone

Make it clear that improving quality of work will help everyone, in different ways.

How Project management was smoothly adopted in a bank: smile and say yes

In cases where the introduction of new IT services is complex, and has to go through committees, I’ve seen more subtle tactics be used, for example in banks. In one case when the adoption committee met, the manager responsible for the project management solution adoption actually said yes to the requirements of all departments, which were complex and even conflicting.

But actually he didn’t enter in any of the micro management requirements, and introduced an overall simplified project management practice that was lead by a small group that started immediately, which was then joined by other and finally by all groups across the bank, and in the end this was a great success.

After a few months, we integrated the solution with more features, and after a year yet more.

How a solution was smoothly adopted in another bank: don’t integrate

Another bank manager, again a committee with loads of requirements, he just used an online service, didn’t get in any integration mess, lead a small motivated group, again a cross company success.

Get IT on your side when they are in

Try to get the IT guys on your side: they appreciate new solutions, even though it may not look so.

Quick tips

1. Start with a small group.

2. Start simple.

3. Put good data from the start.

4. Some information is better than no information.

5. Complete system integration may never happen.

6. Don’t delay waiting for [any requirement here].

7. Reject bizarre ideas from a single user / be practical.
P.S. If it’s the CEO (as most often is) say yes but on further enquiry its “yes but not just now”.

8. Don’t be mislead by developers / technical details.

9. Listen to women.

Tip. Its way more unlikely for women to be mislead by technology / wild unfeasible dreams: they seem to have “built in” a more realistic picture of human beings.

10. It’s more a question of people than a question of technology.

Tip. You could start very very simple, like use a physical space to model your ideas.

Used Prezi for the images, a nice online tool for presentations.

You can now get your own Teamwork server hosted on Amazon cloud: this will be a dedicated server, so you will have all the advantages of having an internal server without having to do any maintenance. E.g. in case of upgrades these will be performed by Teamwork’s staff.

For groups of up to 15 users, you will pay only 83 Euro /month if you buy a year hosting, getting a server completely dedicated to your group.

A dedicated server

Having a dedicated server means for example choosing the DNS name to attribute your server; means having your own time/zone settings and agenda synching options.

On request we can give independent access to the server and to all database backups. You can anytime upgrade your server to more powerful instances, actually the full scalability of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud is available. So you can start small and upgrade when needed.

So… get your Teamwork online:  here are all the details.

http://yourchangemanifesto.com

The service idea is heavily inspired by several of Teamwork bootcamps, experiencing the difficulties and opportunities innovative managers find in introducing change.

It is a free upgrade for all users of version 4. Get the installer / upgrader here:

http://www.twproject.com/download.pag

Bug fixed:

- Bug that prevents user deleting resources

- Iframe portlet not displayed correctly

- Loading image on resource profile

Small improvement:

- Issue exported excel contains issue id (feature request)

The quoted Freakonomics podcast “The Folly of Prediction” is here.

Teamwork, with its focus on recording work in very different ways and from different sources is a good tool to know what is happening and lead change.

Transcript

Almost a transcript of the video.

Traditional PM tools are based on the attempt to predict the future in detail. This is really hard.

Listen to this great podcast by the Freakonomics economists that studied predictions, “What do Wall Street forecasters and Romanian witches have in common? They usually get away, scot-free, with making bad predictions.”

The increased flexibility of work, people, changing conditions, even more in times of crisis. Being capable of reform, changing ideas in companies can be a great strength.

Base your reform on what is happening every day instead of what could, maybe, maybe not, happen.

Trying a more modest approach of understanding what is happening today, every day, can facilitate reforms.

Teamwork is built around the idea of collecting information, even partial information, of what is happening day by day. The app has great flexibility in handling projects, work logging in the most diverse forms

If you want your ideas of change reform and efficiency – hence also increasing quality of work – knowing what is happening can be a great help.

Used in thousands of medium and large companies to know what is happening – give Teamwork a try.

We just published a small update so that Teamwork integrates user help requests to Twitter from inside the application. To do it by hand just tweet @teamworknews.

it is a free upgrade for all users of version 4. Get the installer / upgrader here:

http://www.twproject.com/download.pag

Bug fixed:

- Bug that prevents Teamwork’ sending notifications for expired tasks.

It is a free upgrade for all users of version 4. Get the installer / upgrader here: http://www.twproject.com/download.page

The most important improvement in this release is in the Teamwork process management module.
Now, for instance, you can auto assign resource directly from the process definition file: you can find some xml examples in the application folder (TEAMWORK_ROOT/webapps/ROOT/applications/teamwork/processes).

More details about these improvements will be given in a dedicated blog post out soon.

This  release contains a bug fix on smart combo that doesn’t  show scrollbars in the drop down window.

It includes also an important bug-fix for all users of  Teamwork 4.7 on Oracle.

All the instruction to upgrade your Teamwork installation if you are using Oracle can be found on our forum here:

http://answers.twproject.com/questions/2397/teamwork-47-on-oracle

Feel free to post your feedback and problems:

http://answers.twproject.com/

Thanks to user’s feedback we included an important fix to a bug that prevented Teamwork sending notification e-mails.
This is a free upgrade for all users of version 4. Get the installer / upgrader here: http://www.twproject.com/download.page

Teamwork 4.7 has been released with a major technological update including the latest stable release of Hibernate. This Hibernate release unfortunately includes a bug that prevents Teamwork to  work properly on PostgreSQL. The instructions to get your Teamwork working properly on PostgreSQL after installation are available from our forum here:

http://answers.twproject.com/questions/2317/faq-teamwork-and-postgresql

These operations are required for new installations and for upgrades on PostgreSQL.

Feel free to post your feedback and problems on our forum here:

http://answers.twproject.com/