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When you’re implementing LiquidPlanner, learning how to use all of the features is important. But be sure to place just as much emphasis on your organization’s goals during this transition. Remember that Motivation is a key principle to successful change management implementation. Part of a successful adoption of LiquidPlanner will require addressing the unique motivations of individual team members, as well as their desire to contribute to the larger goals of the organization.
Don’t forget to include your Success Team on this step to get their perspective. As representatives of the team, they will mostly likely be in tune with the concerns and motivations of their team members, when it comes to using a new project management tool.
Identifying Your Goals
Here are simple questions to work through with your Success Team to come to your goals. Make sure to think about goals that your team can achieve in the short term, as well as long term goals. If you only think about long term goals, it will be a long time before you can celebrate wins, and that tends to demotivate teams from adopting change successfully.
- What are our current problems?
- How does LiquidPlanner address these problems?
- What do we need to do differently?
- What does success look like?
What are our current problems?
When you first started exploring LiquidPlanner, you were most likely experiencing something frustrating as a team that drove you to look to a new solution. What were those problems or issues? Perhaps you don’t want to focus on the past. But taking a moment to reflect on the problems your organisation was experiencing will help the team remember what they want to leave behind!
How does LiquidPlanner address these problems?
Thinking about the specific solutions or features that LiquidPlanner provides to address your current problems will help your Success Team focus on implementing the right processes. This is a critical step to communicate the BENEFITS of LiquidPlanner to your team. Connecting LiquidPlanner to address your team’s current pain points will motivate your team to join in on the effort.
As a team, what do we need to do differently?
In order to successfully address your current problems, your team will need to do some things differently to realize the benefits. For some teams, the change might involve a small change in process or a key update provided on tasks. For other teams, the change might involve something much larger, such as getting in the habit of tracking time daily or submitting requests in a streamlined manner. What types of changes do you anticipate your team will need to adopt in order to find value? This is a key step, as your Success Team will need to communicate the expected changes in behavior in order to realize value as a team.
What does success look like?
Take a moment to brainstorm with your Success Team about what success looks like when you’ve solved the current problem(s). This should be your goal! We like to call this the “future state”. You want to help your entire team get to this future state, because it’s a better place for all of you as a team. Identifying what success looks like also helps you know when you can celebrate the wins!
At this step, you also want to be specific in how you document your goals. For example, this is a pretty good goal:
“Help PMs identify at-risk projects and tasks sooner so they can proactively mitigate the risk, rather than putting out fires after it’s too late.”
An even better goal that is specific about what you want to accomplish, and when, would be:
“By using LiquidPlanner to proactively monitor and mitigate at-risk work, our first quarter goal is to complete 90% of project phases on time.”
Great! Now you’re on track to measure success of your LiquidPlanner Implementation with concrete goals. Get ready for the next step – working with your Success Team to craft a communication plan.