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Driving Systems Adoption as Project Manager

Project managers are responsible for balancing system and people readiness. Here are tips to help you prioritize both.

Smiling woman wearing patterned cat‑eye glasses faces the camera; long straight blonde hair and a delicate necklace visible, striped tank top, black-and-white studio portrait on a plain white background. Brandee Fantini – Principal

Every member of the project team has a role to play in driving change, readying people, and creating the environment for successful implementation. In your role as project manager, you oversee all aspects of the system implementation, with goals related to budget, timeline, and quality. You might work with other project managers from the change team, workstreams, or IT, and you’re responsible for integrating and coordinating all timelines and milestones. You work closely with the project lead (and others) to define governance, ways of working, reporting, and communication. You’re often creating status reports and explanation materials for the steering committee and other executives, including gathering input, information, and slides from others.

On large projects, multiple project managers representing different functions are often working closely together to ensure a successful implementation. You forecast resource needs and constraints and work with the project team, the business, IT, and executives to remediate issues and risks. You set priorities for the team, often balancing competing tasks and deadlines. You’re responsible for leading an effective team, delivering a quality solution, and enabling end users to successfully adopt the new system and processes.

“I’ve worked with some great project managers,” says John Patton, change management specialist. “The best are the ones who do two things: 1) they see people knowing what to do, why to do it, when to do it, and how to do it as critical as the core functionality of the system they are delivering, and 2) they view the change management team as experts in people just as a developer is an expert in code and configuring. The worst are the ones that only ask for a quick update, ‘Did you send an email to everybody? Did you complete the training?’ Be like the first.”

Value of change management to project managers

A key benefit for project managers when partnering with a strong change team is that, while the change team isn’t the tech or process expert, they are the people readiness expert. Risk is inherent in any large system implementation, and your change team plays a significant role in identifying and mitigating a host of risks before, during, and after Go Live. From process and workflow to system design, the change team is well positioned to understand risks and work with project team members, the business, and leaders to identify and implement solutions for people readiness.

An effective change team creates materials that communicate complexity in a simple, straightforward way. This helps with all aspects of communication, particularly executive leadership communication. Engage your change team in the process of gaining executive support for decisions and resource requests.

Project managers generally do a really good job communicating operational, status, and logistics information to the project team. Engage your change team to take your communications to the next level by creating a strong sense of team, keeping everyone informed, and making the project fun.

When your change team is deeply embedded in your project team, they are often working more closely with end users prior to Go Live than anyone else. This enables the change team to actively and effectively drive business engagement, which is critical to Go Live success. Ultimately, an effective change team can help you deliver ROI from adoption and project success.

Your role in driving change

The project manager’s role in driving adoption is critical to overall project success. Part of your role is balancing system AND people readiness; you must help prioritize both. The critical path isn’t getting to Go Live—it’s ensuring people are able to use a working system effectively at and well after Go Live.

Here are some key tips for your role:

  1. You have your finger on the pulse of the project, key events, activities, issues, concerns, celebrations, and more. Invite your change team to those meetings and keep them informed of what’s happening. This will enable the change team to be a positive and driving influence across the project team and the business.
  2. Particularly for large-scale projects, there’s often more than one project manager. If you’re the overall project manager, your role likely includes consolidating various project plans and ensuring dates line up, milestones are appropriately mapped, and events are sequenced appropriately. A key aspect of alignment is accurately forecasting resource needs across the project, as well as planning for additional resources during peak periods of need to ensure adequate support for system and people readiness tasks.
  3.  Set the standard for sharing information, explaining decision rationale, and trusting the team. Invite the team to share challenges and risks. Work closely with the project lead to create an engaged, highly functional, and accountable team.

In addition to your role as project manager, there are several key roles in the project team AND the change management team for driving change and systems adoption. To learn more, check out our insights on:

If you’d like to connect with our team to learn more about driving systems adoption, give us a call at 859-415-1000 or reach out through the form below.