Clarity

We are embarking on a journey to utilize the PPM functionality to get realize more benefits from a project/program/portfolio perspective. We believe we have streamlined our PM processes and templates and are ready to start using the tool. One of our goals is to move away from our templates and us the tool exclusively! Next step is to to build a phased approach (roadmap) for our journey starting with some low-lying fruit (for example, entering basic project information and using risk register functionality).  I'd appreciate any thoughts and/or lessons learned that anyone might have from their own journey and experiences with adopting a PPM tool....especially if it might help us with creating our roadmap. 

Thanks in advance for any input!

Hi Nasser_Ansari, the roadmap approach is good - and should be the frame that you hang all of your phased implementations off. A few important considerations (depending on how wide / disperse your organisation is); 

1. Don't assume big bang when you implement new capability or transition your offline PPM controls onto Clarity PPM. You may want to stage onboarding by Business Unit. For example, you want to cut over all offline issues and risks registers to Clarity - you may want to onboard one group / team / program / portfolio to gather learnings and embed. Then once you have that group nailed continue your rollout horizontally to other groups, and accelerating the rollout to the other groups as you go along.

2. Give yourself time to sufficiently embed the change. What may be easy in the system, may take quite a long time to embed the process and people changes needed to leverage the capability. This will definitely be the case for Resource Management in Clarity PPM.

3. Ensure your deliver value at multiple levels along each step of the way. Remember you are rolling out a PPM tool, not a PM tool - so ensure that the Portfolio Managers and Executives receive output from a functionality rollout / implementation along with the PMs / Resource Managers / Team Members.

4. Mix low hanging fruit with key big ticket items. This is critical, because the low value but necessary stuff can quickly rack up.

Overall, ensure you set expectations for timing, and keep bringing your stakeholders back to the roadmap. Celebrate your successes and shout loudly about your wins. And ensure you have a baseline of where you have started and where you are going and still have to go.