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Planview Customer Success Center

Encouraging Adoption by Project Managers, Resource Managers, and Others

You can only achieve Business Value from PPM Pro if your people are accurately and consistently capturing their work, resource assignments and activities, financials, or other information you need within PPM Pro. Change can be hard and learning to use a different tool can be intimidating for your users, especially if they have been using a different tool in which they are comfortable or have expertise. Below are various methods to facilitate adoption by portfolio managers, project managers, resource managers, and stakeholders that have worked for our customers. Encouraging Adoption by Time Users and Timesheet Approvers is covered in its own special topic, please see it if you have challenges with users adopting timesheets or timesheet approvals. If you have an example not portrayed below that you would be willing to share, please email productmanagement-ppmpro@planview.com and we will gladly add it!

 

PPM Pro Users Adoption Method
All - In General
  1. Identify and have a committed executive sponsor:
    • Executive support is essential for any organizational change to be successful
    • Find out what PPM and resource data, metrics, and analyses the executive sponsor, and other executives as well, is currently unable to see and/or cares most about, then focus your PPM Pro feature usage, reports, and dashboards on the quickest win for giving them this information (see Business Value from PPM Pro for ideas)
    • Ensure your users responsible for updating and providing the information that your executive(s) care about are aware that the executives need and are viewing that data...and that the users will get credit for having this information in PPM Pro!
  2. Keep score and highlight value; ensure you have reports and dashboards that show progress and performance over time, for example our PPM Pro customers have been able to:
    • Increase revenue through accelerating time-to-market by an average of 10-20%
    • Increase internal and contractor resource utilization by 5-15%
    • Reduce spend on non-aligned, failing projects by and average of 10-20%
    • Reduce time to reprioritize due to business challenges and new projects from weeks to hours
    • Reduce report generation and portfolio analysis preparation costs by 20-50%
    • Reduce application portfolio costs by 3-5%
  3. Highlight and demonstrate the PPM Pro capabilities that will make your users' lives easier and take some of the workload from them, such as:
    • Visibility across their resources, projects, and/or portfolios all in one place
    • Reporting and dashboards that show data (and data changes), including configurable recurring notifications and publishing
    • Project templates to save constantly adding the same information for each new project
    • Request workflows to streamline the work intake process and make sure all relevant information is provided at the right time, enabling easier decision making
    • Task spreadsheet editor for easy of entry, management, and sharing/updating with others that may not have access to a project
    • Automatic rollups, financial and work progress calculations, scoring, and portfolio and project health alerts
  4. Communicate about PPM Pro capabilities and why it is important for each user to adopt the tool:
    • Target messages to key groups and users, focusing on the importance of their role in using the tool (people-focused, not tool-focused) and with transparency for pros and cons
    • Be concise but informative
    • Share organizational, departmental, and user benefits and expectations, emphasizing how people's input is important (see relevant PPM Pro Business Value items for inspiration)
  5. Involve users in the implementation and on-going process:
    • Discuss with users existing stigmas and concerns about using the tool; use logic to dissolve concerns and the intent is NOT to micro-manage or be Big Brother, this is all about helping the company to understand, prioritize, and realize benefits from their work now and in the future
    • Identify the value to the user, letting them know their input is important and critical for success
    • Continually re-evaluate how PPM Pro is being accepted, adjusting process as appropriate
    • Discuss ways to Reduce Workload through Integrations
  6. Provide training, live or by videos, and with concise Quick Reference and How To materials, being sure to:
    • Demonstrate time-saving features
    • Instill confidence in the learners; it's not difficult to use, it's just different than what they might be used to
  7. Congratulate and reward:
    • Communication on successes and improvements for the business; market your successes!
    • Leadership recognition of groups, departments, and potentially individuals
    • Tangible and meaningful rewards for participation
    • Sincere thank-you emails and messages for success
  8. Sunset former tools and systems; as feasible, removing the old tools and systems that are no longer needed makes the transition to PPM Pro real and measurable. It also can save money and time by no longer needing to support and pay for them.
Executives and Stakeholders
  1. Share benefits of the product and processes it enables overall, such as being able to:
    • Have full visibility across portfolios and projects, managing the overall pipeline to make sure you are getting the best return on investment and that work is aligned to your strategy
    • Ensure better accuracy by having fact-based data as opposed to emotion, with manual "subjective" reporting eliminated, promoting on-time, on-budget, and on-scope work delivery
    • Manage to your organization needs, including not just portfolios, projects, and resources, but also request/work intake, time, and financials such as capitalization
    • Guarantee the right people and skill sets are assigned to key projects so that they can be completed on time...or if the right people are not available, to know to get them
    • Make processes and content consistent for apples to apples cross-organization comparison and reporting
    • Comply with governance, SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act), and/or public financial reporting needs, by virtue of having procedures and controls configured in PPM Pro, a single system
  2. Create and publish dashboards to inform about:
    • Portfolio performance overall, especially financial impacts, progress towards strategic goals, and key performance indicator trends
    • Project progress, including health and projects forecasted to deliver late and/or over budget
    • Resource capacity versus demand, to identify over- and under-utilization and capacity of roles and resources
    • Project demand and work intake, to understand the type of work that is being requested, qualify it, and ensure the right work is moving forward

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Portfolio Managers
  1. Share project management benefits of adding and updating project information, such as being able to:
    • Ensure consistent and accurate data is represented on their executives' dashboards, to promote credibility and confidence with their stakeholders
    • Understand the health of their portfolios - how many of their projects are active and if they are (or aren't) getting done on time
    • Score and optimize portfolio project contents to ensure the best mix and scheduling of projects and resources given your organization constraints and goals
    • Centralize all projects and roll up your project information into one or more portfolios, so that you can demonstrate how it is contributing to company goals and strategies
    • Comply with governance, SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act), and/or public financial reporting needs, by virtue of having procedures and controls configured in PPM Pro, a single system
  2. Share tips and tricks for customization and easier interaction and time savings, such as:
  3. Create and publish dashboards to inform about:
    • Portfolio projects statuses, health, and financial performance
    • KPI trends
    • Alignment to strategic objectives

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Project Managers
  1. Share project management benefits of adding and updating project information, such as being able to:
    • Ensure consistent and accurate data is represented on their portfolio managers' and executives' dashboards, to promote credibility and confidence with these stakeholders
    • Have a single repository for all project details and documentation, notes, staffing, financials, task plans, risks and action items, and other key information
    • Highlight to executives and stakeholders how well your project is doing, or if it is in danger to justify additional budget, resources, and project needs for success
    • Allocate and manage what roles and resources are dedicated to your project, ensuring you have the right people to perform the work
    • Track expenses (and revenue), including budget versus actual costs and Capex versus Opex, to monitor and quickly see project financial health
    • Analyze and manage issues and risks, and project and task progress, so that you can troubleshoot and course correct as needed to promote on time delivery
    • Receive alerts when project staffing, financials, and other data changes
    • Centralize all projects and roll up your project information into one or more portfolios, so that you can demonstrate how it is contributing to company goals and strategies
    • Comply with governance, SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act), and/or public financial reporting needs, by virtue of having procedures and controls configured in PPM Pro, a single system
  2. Share tips and tricks for customization and easier interaction and time savings, such as:
  3. Create and publish dashboards to inform about:
    • Project status, health, and progress
    • KPI trends
    • Issues and risks management

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Resource Managers
  1. Share resource management benefits of adding and updating resource information and assignments, such as being able to:
    • Ensure consistent and accurate data is represented on their project managers', portfolio managers', and executives' dashboards, to promote credibility and confidence with these stakeholders
    • Have full visibility into what your resources are and will be working on, across projects and portfolios and including admin and keeping the lights on efforts
    • Highlight over/under worked people and how time is spent
    • Justify the need for additional resources to meet work demand
    • Try out different scenarios for rebalancing and optimizing your people assignments to projects and work using What If and/or Predictive Portfolio Analysis (PPA)
    • Make certain your company's top priority work has the right people at the right time, to ensure effort, time, and budget estimates are accurate, and keep your stakeholders happy
  2. Share tips and tricks for customization and easier interaction and time savings, such as:
  3. Create and publish dashboards to inform about:
    • Timesheet and/or project assignments, to give insight into resource work activities
    • Role and resource allocation, to highlight over and under allocations and justify requests for additional headcount

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