The biggest challenge organisations 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 customers implementing ZilicusPM with greater engagement. And many organisations 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 emphasise 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 organisation. 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:

  1. Introduce ZilicusPM
  2. Discuss goals and benefits thereof using ZilicusPM
  3. Quickly walk-through essential features
  4. Highlight guidelines to follow and best practices to use PM system
  5. Develop action plan and explain next steps for your team members
  6. 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.


Project Management Software - Dashboard



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 favourite 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.


Remember ZilicusPM is a solid project portfolio management software, it offers plethora of project management features listed below. The best adoption and utilisation of this software we have seen for those customers who have clear understanding of current project management process maturity, people skills and aware about project management, clearly laid down target for next maturity levels and path/duration to reach there. Zilicus can help you in realising the best possible results in this journey and importantly bring predictability and consistency in your project delivery process.


Project Management Features:



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Project Management Software by Zilicus ZilicusPM - Online Project Management Software

ZilicusPM is project management software that offers an incredibly simple and collaborative way to manage projects. Try ZilicusPM a powerful tool to stay on top of things with aesthetic dashboard. ZilicusPM enables online project planning – WBS, online scheduling, resource assignment, Gantt chart, project tracking, issue management, online calendar, risk register and much more. Sign up for 30-days risk free trial.