The simple problem with software purchasing decisions these days is people make it harder than it needs to be. The "correct" way to pick an application for your business is a long and academic one. You do analysis, determine weighted requirements, then go to market looking for alternatives which you compare with your requirements.
This may not be for everyone, particularly for those with smaller businesses looking to fulfill minimal requirements. If you know your not going to do it the hard way and just want some quick pointers please read on....
This may not be for everyone, particularly for those with smaller businesses looking to fulfill minimal requirements. If you know your not going to do it the hard way and just want some quick pointers please read on....
Step 1. Pick something simple
The process for successfully implementing project management software is different for each organisation. It comes down to what is right for the culture and complexity of the business. My advise would be figure out exactly what you need and pick the simplest tool for the job. You need something that will make your job easier rather than simple increase your data entry. It's very difficult to get people to add things to their work load so don't expect people will rush to use your new package if the tool requires a lot of effort to produce results people don't already need.
In my experience this is the number one cause of failure, lets face it if you install something simple and get 100% of people to enthusiastically use it then you have succeeded. If you install something which promises to control every aspect of your business and only a couple of staff seriously use it then you've failed.
Systems have to be seen to help, not add workload.
Step 2. Pick Something Easy
We all love features! Often I look at online project management software and I'm blown away by the features. For $99.95 a month I can get software that will manage almost every aspect of my businesses. I can time sheet, invoice my customers, balance finances, way up my initiatives, plan my projects, schedule my staff, measure business benefits, collaborate, integrate and ultimately produce phosphate.
But how good is it under the hood Realistically I'm not going to spend my day feeding the system every piece of data it needs to do those things...however I get excited and watch the promotional video anyway. After the third screen shot I start getting suspicious. It seems these software companies have spent so much time building functionality that they have missed one critical aspect, usability. What starts off looking like an interactive gantt chart (project plan) usually ends up being a report. Project Management usually ends up being a mad spreadsheet like data entry screen.
Now I spend a lot of time building project plans and know I'm not going to use anything that isn't at least as easy as Microsoft Project. I don't care if it provides my accountant with a really great report or can improve my bottom line. I'm just not going to use clunky software.
I'm sure your users will feel the same. When selecting project management software make sure its easy to preform the simple tasks.
Step 3. Let the users decide
You can get a package that ticks all the boxes but if the users don't love it, they won't use it. Similarly another great way to get people to dig their feet in is to make a decision for them. Lets face it most Project Management staff have been waiting for years to get their hands on some good project management software. A great way to turn them against the project is to force something on them, particularly when another part of the business made the decision. Its critical to get people involved in the decision making process. If they don't buy in there is no project management software package on earth they will commit to using properly.
Make a short list then let the end users try each one. Get them to setup a project, forecast and schedule each other onto it. Watch them use it and pretty soon the right software will be obvious.
The right software will be easy, intuitive and get the job down quickly.
Step 4. Make it collaborative (but not to much)
One of the best things about online project management tools is their ability to allow all users in a project group to collaborate. Oddly enough the worst thing about them is the fact that sometimes they rely to heavily on these people to keep the content up to date. Let me explain...
Good Collaboration There is a reason people like social networks right? Its because they are fun and at the same time a good opportunity for people to read relevant social news and be heard. People don't see social networks as extra workload and for this reason I like the social network approach when applied to project management software. A good application should allow users to perform social activities like blog on projects and tasks, view and comment on others posts. This way your team will get involved, create a dialogue and give themselves a reason to keep using your software.
Collaboration Gone Bad One of my pet hates is software that gobbles time from everyone in the business to keep it up to date. Many systems that give you the golden vision of managing your whole business require time sheeting, task and progress updating, status reporting, issue and risk, action updates etc...
Its just common sense that your users will hate this sort of system. Which means they won't use it, and then it will be out of date and useless.
Don't do this to yourself. Get a collaborative system but avoid systems that require massive amounts of input from everyone.
Step 5. One Step at a time
We have all seen how people get very feature greedy when implementing software systems. Most new systems will perform many different functions, some of these new to staff members. The stats tell us, if you try to implement all of these features at once you will increase the scope of the project and therefore the likelihood of failure. This really applies to project management software which can be very multifaceted.
Simply put the reason you will fail with this 'all at once' approach is you will spook your staff. Most people don't like change, particularly if it comes with a perceived increase in work load. If you want people to use the system to do things they don't already do plan to release the system in steps. For example getting everyone to create project plans in your new application is a project in itself. If you do succeed at just this one thing I would consider that a massive success.
Once you have everyone using the project management software for the simple things it's not going to be difficult to slowly broaden the scope of its functionality. If you then want them to forecast, work request, time sheet..etc make those into subsequent projects and leave them well alone till people have fully adopted the first release.
I would suggest ordering the different phases of the project by how beneficial to staff they are and how easy they will be to roll out. Create a long term plan for the whole roll out and move towards that goal in incremental releases. Just remember, if you have something complex to roll out.. do it once step at a time
In summary select something simple and you will have every chance of success.
