1. Communicate Early and Often
It’s best not to wait till the last minute to email your team about the new project management tool that is being rolled out next week. Send out communication early, so that your team has plenty of time to process the change. As with all change initiatives, you may experience some resistance. Early communication gives you time to connect with, and prepare for, those who have concerns. In your communication plan, you should also build in frequent updates. Emails slip through the cracks, people miss meetings, and we’re just busy! Sometimes we need to hear the message a few times before we realize what is being asked of us. Communicating often, leading up to your LiquidPlanner Go-Live, will ensure that the message is heard.

2. Send Communications from the Right People
Consider who should be the “messenger” for your various communications. Change management studies have shown that having the initial message come from the executive sponsor lends credibility to the initiative and helps to inspire the team. It’s important that the executive sponsor conveys the “why LiquidPlanner?” in this initial message, to underscore the benefit of change for the organization. It is ideal for continued communications to be delivered by front-line managers or leaders. Since they have the closest relationship, their team members may be more receptive to information shared. These are also great opportunities to gather feedback and prepare to address concerns before going live.

3. Identify your Target Go-Live and Work Backwards
With your Success Team, identify a target Go-Live date to have your team switch over and begin using LiquidPlanner. Be realistic about the amount of time you’ll need to configure the workspace and have projects built out. To maintain momentum, the Go-Live date should happen immediately after your LiquidPlanner team training. Once you have your Go-Live date set, work your communication plan backwards from that date.

4. Communication Doesn’t Stop After Go-Live
Plan for meetings, emails, and other communications you’ll need to schedule after Go-Live. Your team will have more questions on how to use LiquidPlanner properly after Go-Live, so make sure you’re prepared to engage them with the right communication channels.

To help get you started, we’ve provided a link to our sample Communication Plan, which includes some sample email templates you can use for messaging.–

Access the Communication Plan Template Here

The post Create Your Communication Plan appeared first on LiquidPlanner.

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.

The post Set LiquidPlanner Goals appeared first on LiquidPlanner.

The Success Team

There are three major players in a successful implementation team.

The Implementation Manager (aka Project Manager)
If you’re reading this, hopefully you’re the one driving the implementation and learning how to plan a successful LiquidPlanner roll-out. As the champion, you will set the pace for executing on the communication plan, completing key documents for team training, and mobilizing your Success Team towards go-live. You will be a key player in determining how to drive change in order to find ongoing success and value with LiquidPlanner.

Success Team Members
Gathering the right people on your Success Team as change agents has two benefits:

1. Multiple people within your organization will be power-user experts in LiquidPlanner. The more capable users you have within your organization, the more value you will get from using LiquidPlanner in the right way.
2. Your Success Team Members should include key stakeholders and team managers that will help to positively mobilize the team along with you. Early in the implementation plan, your Success Team Members should also learn how to use LiquidPlanner and be involved in designing key workflow and process decisions.

Executive Support
Getting executive buy-in is also important at this early stage. The leadership within your organization needs to stand up and motivate the team by saying, “This is important, and here’s why.” A key to all successful change management initiatives involves partnering with an executive sponsor who will provide the initial communication to the team, to convey the benefits of using a project management solution and to help support its continued usage.

Do you have your team in place? Great – it’s time to work with them to set your goals for your implementation phase and beyond.

The post Gather Your Success Team appeared first on LiquidPlanner.

Communication is important when implementing any new initiative. We recommend introducing LiquidPlanner to your team in a LiquidPlanner Kickoff meeting.  Starting off with an open dialogue and clear expectations is important for buy-in, adoption, and long-term satisfaction.  By helping members to understand the tool and how they will be using it, you’ll be setting the team up for success.

Once you’ve set up your workspace and created some ground rules for how LiquidPlanner will be used (documented in your LP Playbook), you’ll be ready to spread the word.

Download the sample presentation (on the right) to get ideas for your kickoff meeting!

Step 1. Create a kickoff meeting agenda

A simple presentation that addresses the why, what, and how is the best way to go. Here is an agenda we recommend for the kickoff meeting:

• Why LiquidPlanner
• Share goals
• Discuss usage guidelines and workspace structure
• Demo basic features
• Describe the next steps

To plan for the meeting, add a task to your workspace and use the checklist section to keep track of your progress. If you plan to show a Powerpoint presentation, you can upload a draft of the presentation to the task and get feedback in advance of the meeting.

  Tip:  You can copy the list above and paste it right into LiquidPlanner.  Just use the Add Multiple function in the checklist section of the task you create. 

Why LiquidPlanner

Before sharing the details of how your team will be adopting LiquidPlanner, start by explaining why using LiquidPlanner is important for your team and your business. Help your team imagine what they’ll achieve after they start using LiquidPlanner and how it will solve the pain points they’ve been experiencing with the existing project management framework.

Once you’ve explained the purpose for adopting LiquidPlanner, show this 1-minute video to give a high-level overview of what LiquidPlanner is:

Share goals

State the goals you want to achieve from your use of LiquidPlanner. Reflect on the specific problems your team has experienced in the past (e.g. unmet deadlines, overbooked resources, shifting priorities) and highlight how they will be resolved with LiquidPlanner.

See The Business Case for Using LiquidPlanner for top benefits and some ROI metrics from real LiquidPlanner customers.

Discuss usage guidelines and workspace structure

Spend some time going through each section of the LP Playbook that you created and explain the guidelines for using LiquidPlanner. List the important business rules that you’d like all team members to follow (eg. submitting timesheets each week on Friday, only PMs are to add new projects). Be sure to show how your packages and projects are set up on the Projects tab and explain what each package should be used for.

At the end of the kickoff meeting, it’s a good idea to email out a copy of your playbook so that your team can review it before joining the workspace.

Demo basic features

Using your LiquidPlanner workspace, show some of the features that your team will be using every day and how they’ll improve your overall workflow.  You can demo a real project that you’ve been working on or create some example items just for the kickoff meeting. Here are a few topics you may wish to demo:

• Tasks
• The Edit Panel
• My Work
• Comments
• Checklists

   Tip:  We recommend highlighting your own personal favorite features and the benefits that they provide.

Describe the next steps

Communicate the “go live” date for when your team will start using LiquidPlanner.  Emphasize that all planning and collaboration should take place in the workspace going forward.

You can create simple and fun training tasks for your team to complete when they first join the workspace.  Some examples are:

• Update your profile with a picture, name, and contact info
• Bookmark the LiquidPlanner login page in your browser
• Save the workspace Inbox email address as a contact in your email client
• Download the LiquidPlanner app for iPhone or Android
• Send a comment from this task to another workspace member

Finally, make sure that your team knows that you will be available to answer their questions and that training will be provided to ease the transition.  Ask that your team members set aside an hour to go through training resources and watch the recommended videos — or better yet, estimate and assign training tasks in LiquidPlanner! Promote the use of the LiquidPlanner Help Center so that your team can find answers themselves.

Step 2. Send an introductory memo

Before the kickoff meeting, it’s a good idea to send an introductory email or memo to your team so they know what to expect. This can be a brief message that highlights the main benefits of LiquidPlanner and some high-level details about the rollout process. This is also a good opportunity to schedule a time to hold the kickoff meeting.

Step 3. Lead the kickoff meeting

Now that you have an awesome agenda and your meeting is scheduled, the hard work is done! Here are some tips for leading a great kickoff meeting:

• Set up your meeting in a room that has a projector and ample seating.
• If you created slides for your presentation, make sure you’ve got them up on the screen. Don’t forget to log into LiquidPlanner and have your workspace open in another window so that it’s easy to flip over during the demo portion of your presentation.
• Follow your agenda and be sure to pause between each section to address questions or concerns.
• Provide actionable next steps.

Step 4. Share training resources

Immediately after the kickoff meeting, we recommend distributing specific resources to the appropriate members of your team so they can start learning right away.

Here are some resources to help your team get started:

Getting to Know LiquidPlanner

All new users should read this guide to learn the basics.

User Guide for Members

This short guide will walk members through finding their work, tracking time, and collaborating in the workspace.

User Guide for Managers

With this guide, project managers will learn how to schedule team priorities, troubleshoot dates and risks, and manage changes to the plan.

Training Videos

Instructional videos allow your team to learn at their own pace.  The videos page features the full Getting Started series as well as Popular Features videos and recorded webinars.

Related Resources

Establishing Guidelines for Team Usage

The post Introducing LiquidPlanner to Your Team appeared first on LiquidPlanner.

LiquidPlanner is flexible and can be molded to fit your team’s unique needs. Once your workspace has been set up, many teams find it helpful to create a playbook to get everyone on the same page.  Communicating these rules upfront will set your team up for success and will help everyone feel comfortable with LiquidPlanner. We recommend scheduling a kickoff meeting with your team and sharing a team playbook that you create.

Here are a couple of ideas to document and communicate your LiquidPlanner Playbook:

• Create an email, handout, or PowerPoint presentation for the kickoff meeting.
• Upload the information to an “LP Playbook” task in LiquidPlanner.

Your LP Playbook should define the goals and guidelines for using LiquidPlanner so that each member has clear answers for; “What do I do?”, “How do I do it?”, “When do I do it?”, “What is my role?”, and “What is the benefit?”.

Access the Playbook Setup Guide to complete a guided questionnaire and create a downloadable LiquidPlanner Playbook.

Set Goals

Start with a concrete goal or objective to get your team excited and understand why using LiquidPlanner is important for your organization. Think about the specific problems you’ve experienced in the past (e.g. unmet deadlines, overbooked resources, shifting priorities) and highlight how they will be resolved with LiquidPlanner.

Set Guidelines

Set guidelines to address the questions below. Then, present these guidelines to help your team members understand what their role is in the workspace and how they should use certain features.

ADDING, MODIFYING, OR PRIORITIZING PLAN ITEMS

TRACKING TIME & TIMESHEETS

AVAILABILITY & NOTIFICATION SETTINGS

More Ideas…

In addition, you may wish to present specific rules around:

Checklists

Smaller work items for a particular task can be captured as checklist items.  Remind members that assigning checklist items to other people will not draw from their availability.  A best practice is to ensure that all checklist items have been completed before marking the task as “done”.

Virtual Members

If you have established virtual members in your workspace, define their purpose, who should add them, and when they should be used.

Activities

You have the option of creating activities that members can select to categorize logged or remaining hours.  Be sure to explain what each activity should be used for, who should use them, and when they should be used.

Email Integration

Encourage your team to communicate directly in the workspace or by replying to LiquidPlanner email notifications so that chatter and documents can be captured in the context of specific tasks or projects.  Tasks can also be created with email integration.

Tracking Time for non-Project work (Ongoing Tasks)

If it’s important for your team to track all of their non-project hours in LiquidPlanner, make sure to establish a process and explain how to track time using the “ongoing tasks” you’ve set up.

My Work vs Projects tab

Members who are completing tasks in LiquidPlanner should be urged to view and update their tasks from the My Work tab.  Project managers or members responsible for prioritizing work can adjust the schedule from the Projects tab.

Expenses (available with the Enterprise plan only)

Provide guidance for adding billable and non-billable costs incurred during your project work. What’s the approval process? Who enters the data? What supporting information should be included in comments or uploaded to the plan item?

Share Resources and Get Feedback

After you’ve presented your playbook to your team, it’s important to address any questions or concerns.  The more comfortable your team is with using LiquidPlanner, the more it will become part of your organization’s process, and the more likely it is that your team will fully adopt the change.

Show the tips and tricks that you’ve learned in LiquidPlanner and share links to relevant videos, recorded webinars, Knowledge Base articles, user guides, blog posts, and the Help Center so that your team can always be learning.

Finally, be sure to check in with your team members along the way and make amendments to your playbook if something isn’t working.

See Real Results

Now that you know the importance of creating a playbook, watch this webinar to see some real LiquidPlanner customer playbooks and their results:

The post Establishing Guidelines for Team Usage appeared first on LiquidPlanner.

Introducing a new tool is an exciting time! You’ve finally found a solution that will help you and your team do great work. But, there’s that lingering little detail of getting your team to adopt the new solution. Where do you start?

From our experience with hundreds of onboarding engagements, customers that approach their LiquidPlanner implementation with an organized plan tend to be the most successful. Think of adopting a new tool like running a project. If you’ve got a plan in place, you’ll have a higher chance of success.

Who Is Leading the Implementation?

Every project needs a project manager and your LiquidPlanner roll-out is no exception. The first step is to identify a strong champion to drive the implementation and act as a mobilizer for the team. Now and in the future, they will be the point-of-contact for all things LiquidPlanner. Having an appointed project manager is key to a successful implementation, and if you’re reading this guide, that person might be you!

Keep in mind, it’s important to have multiple champions to support the implementation project manager. This team of champions can support ongoing usage of LiquidPlanner across the team. You can learn more about this in the next step: Gather Your Success Team.

Preparing for Change

Implementing a new tool within your organisation, and achieving long-term success, requires a change in behavior from all team members. To ensure a positive and successful change experience for your team, make sure incorporate these principles in your implementation plan:

Communicate

When it comes to changing process or workflow, no one likes surprises. Effective change management starts with a communication plan that considers the appropriate timing, and the right person, to deliver new information to the team. In this Implementing LiquidPlanner series, you’ll find some guidance from us on how to craft a solid communication plan.

Motivate

Building the foundation for lasting change starts with addressing the key motivators for your organization and individual team members. Why is LiquidPlanner going to be an important tool for your organization? Your team will also be asking “What’s in it for me?” We’ll walk you through some tips on how to establish effective goals with your Success Team to kick start some ideas on how to motivate your team.

Train

In order to use LiquidPlanner your team will need to be trained on what you need them to do. In this guide you’ll find two resources to prepare your team for Go-Live: the LiquidPlanner Playbook and the Kickoff Team Meeting Presentation. Dedicated time to formally train your team how to use LiquidPlanner before go-live is critical. If you need our support for training, see our Professional Services for more information.

Reinforce

It’s human nature to revert back to our old habits. Just because you’ve trained your team how to use LiquidPlanner, doesn’t mean they will stick with it. Think about how you will reinforce correct usage of LiquidPlanner, and motivate your team to fully adopt the new process(es). It’s important to celebrate wins and make sure to schedule time to check in with your team after go-live to address ongoing questions.

If you take the time to incorporate these change management initiatives, your LiquidPlanner implementation experience will be much more organized and successful. You’ll also get a return on your investment a lot faster. Once your team is up and running with LiquidPlanner, you’ll wonder how you ever managed all of your projects without it!

Ready to get started? Let’s take the next step and gather your Success Team.

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