4 Tips for New Teams to Successfully Embrace Project Management Software – ZilicusPM

To ensure successful implementation and adoption of ZilicusPM – project management software, we have been working closely with our customers, all over the world. I speak to umpteen number of customers every month to understand how they engage with ZilicusPM. I make note of the their experiences of adopting ZilicusPM to find out what worked for them, what challenges they faced, which factors made adoption and ongoing engagement with PM system successful. These interactions help us improve the overall customer experience with ZilicusPM,

And as far as our experience goes, the biggest challenge an organization faces is adopting new project management software (or for that matter any new system) is managing change. The change management in terms of preparing processes and staff’s mindset in accepting, adopting new project management tool. Yet we have come across quite a few examples where teams have done amazingly well to embrace new tools and systems.

And I am sure you can do that too!

Based on the experiences and learnings directly shared by our customers, following are top four points of your action plan to the successful implementation of ZilicusPM.

Set a Clear Roadmap and Expectations from Team Members

Really this is your first and foremost point to consider for higher adoption of project management software. It is important for your organization to lay down the roadmap to outline stages/phases in which your senior managers, staff members, contractors from different department will be onboarded to the project management system.

Once you have clear outline of implementation, identified champions to advocate new PM system in your organization, you need to set clear expectations from project teams.

• What they should be accessing
• When and how frequently they are expected to update project activities
• When they should submit timesheet entries
• What information should they update before weekly or monthly status meeting

One interesting tip one of our customers told me, which he believed has made team members use ZilicusPM regularly without any option

Our project managers were asked to report project status against project Ids as recorded in Zilicus. Project managers in their weekly status meeting would ask team members status of the bugs/issues by asking specific bug numbers.”

You Need Change Agents aka Champions aka Advocates

The change agent (or champions as some customers call it), is a person in your team who is really well-versed with ZilicusPM, who is resourceful, serves as Go-To-The-Guy for any query related to ZilicusPM. He is your internal trainer for your organization who can train other trainers. If you would like to bring smoother adoption of the tool, right in the beginning, you should be able to identify and nominate champions.

Champions not only serve the oboarding process for your team but they also hear questions/concerns from the team and can pass-on to Zilicus for higher engagement with PM system.

Make ZilicusPM integral Part of Your Meetings.

First Four Weeks Deliberately make it a point to discuss about ZilicusPM in your weekly meeting. Hear your team members’ questions and concerns about using ZilicusPMyou’re your champions would already be set on their target to advocate ZilicusPM in your company, team members will find it easier to use ZilicusPM, know its application interface and they will realize that ZilicusPM is one-central-place for entire project activities be it project plan, tasks, issues, risks, documents, meetings.

Next Four Weeks & Onwards: Some of our team members would be smart enough to figure out advanced tricks and tips of using ZilicusPM, encourage them to share their tips with team, champions. Encourage team members to share feedback about how project management system can be used better.

In subsequent meeting, start discussing your project plan with team members and track schedule with reference to updates reflected in ZilicusPM system. It ensure team members are held accountable for their project activities but also gives everyone a real visibility into what is happening in a project.

Strong Support from Higher Management

Implementing a new system definitely warrants greater support from higher management for few reasons. Once employees are made aware of top-management’s clear intention to roll-out project managements system, they prepare themselves to greater extent.

For faster and successful implementation, you might want to reward champions or team members who would do incredible job; at the same time there can be small section of employees who might not be willing to get involved. In either case having top-management or senior management support makes the differences.

I would definitely suggest you to think about these points. You are welcome to share your improvisations. Do let me know if Team Zilicus can help you in making your ZilicusPM adoption successful.

About Zilicus

Zilicus offers the best project portfolio management tool ZilicusPM, with robust project management tools capabilities and easy ways to track project management KPI,

Know more about project portfolio management, Gantt chart, best project management tool, project management office, project management tips, project planning guide, project risk management, project scope management, effective project management, project manager guides and know more about Project Portfolio Management Software, Project Management Software Guide.