Kick-off ZilicusPM: Introducing Online Project Management Software to Your Team

As we discussed in earlier post, the biggest challenge organizations face (be it business transformation, expansion or new processes) is the change management. And the most important aspect to introduce and embrace change is transparent & frequent communication. And same principle applies when you will introduce project management software ZilicusPM, to your team.

We have seen success stories of our customers implementing ZilicusPM with greater adoption, engagement. And organizations have followed our recommendations to get it right. We are happy to share these recommendation how you set it right, too.

Briefly,

Send an introductory Email to your team
Schedule an introductory kick-off meeting for open dialogue
Set clear expectations and share benefits of using ZilicusPM
Quick walk-through of the project management system
Lay-down practices and processes to follow
Share resources for each role/user type to get started
Hear feedback of your colleagues, hear their suggestions to make it better, quicker

Clearly you will have to get their buy-in for higher adoption, more participation, engagement for win-win situation and long term success.

1. An Introductory Email to Your Team

As you decide to invite your colleagues, users to projects in ZilicusPM; as a warm-up tactic and to build familiarity about the project management system – ZilicusPM, send an introductory email to your team. Also set your expectations in this email and emphasize on the benefits of using ZilicusPM.

Usually, a senior project manager who is in-charge of roll-out will send this memo/email to his sub-ordinates, colleagues in his organization. S/he can also state high level information about roll-out plan.

2. Create a Calendar Meeting Event to Kick-off ZilicusPM

Schedule a meeting event in your roll-out project in ZilicusPM and use its agenda section for the meeting. Here is an agenda we recommend for the first ZilicusPM kick-off meeting:

Introduce ZilicusPM
Discuss goals and benefits thereof using ZilicusPM
Quickly walk-through essential features
Highlight guidelines to follow and best practices to use PM system
Develop action plan and explain next steps for your team members
Send minutes of meeting using ZilicusPM and highlight action items

Introduce ZilicusPM

Use this 2-minute video introduction of ZilicusPM and the video will set the ball rolling for ZilicusPM. Additionally if you wish and if it is appropriate you can use brochure or your own presentation to introduce ZilicusPM.

Discuss Goals and Benefits of Using ZilicusPM

You and your team might have faced some challenges in managing projects in the past (slipped timeline, under-utilized or over-committed, resources, unresolved issues, communication gap, etc.) Just mull-over those problems in your kick-off meeting and explain how those problems will be addressed by using ZilicusPM. You can check for case study of your industry from ZilicusPM representative and use this case study to demonstrate value proposition and RoI of using ZilicusPM.

Quickly Walk-Through Essential Features of ZilicusPM

To give a better idea about this project management software, give them a glimpse of ZilicusPM with a quick walk-through/demo. It is recommended to focus on some of the features your team will be using regularly (i.e. you are expecting them to use regularly). Let me suggest some of these features:

I’d also suggest you to share your own personal liking and favorite feature in ZilicusPM and how you find it really useful. It helps new project management system to attain better impression.

Highlight guidelines to follow and best practices to use PM system

ZilicusPM has comprehensive user guide that also lays-down best practices, short-cuts and productivity tips of using ZilicusPM. I’d suggest you to invest your time going through these guide and articles so that you can create guidelines and highlight best practices of using ZilicusPM. You can share these guideline and best practices as a common reference document within ZilicusPM project or point them to guides, articles in ZilicusPM.

Develop action plan and explain next steps for your team members

I am assuming that you have developed an action plan to roll-out ZilicusPM in your organization. Inform the go-live date to your team members so that they can start using ZilicusPM. Please make it clear to your team members that all project updates will be tracked through ZilicusPM and every project collaboration activity should happen using ZilicusPM.

Instill confidence in your colleagues that using ZilicusPM is really simple and there will be enough training resources, support available to smoothly transition. Also assure your colleague that you will remain accessible and be assisting them, if they come across any difficulty.

You should recommend and ask your colleagues to set assign one hour in first week to go through the ‘Get-Started’ guide, video-guide and support articles. Encourage them to use ZilicusPM (you can set up a test project) for such try-outs.

Send Minutes of Meeting (MoM) and Share Action Items

Once your Kick-Off meeting is over, you can share minutes of meeting and highlight action items for your team. If your colleagues have made suggestions or have raised questions, make a note of those and put those together in MoM.

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,

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