What's the checklist for rolling out new software to your crew?

If a builder's project manager won't touch the new software, the owner needs to grab 15 minutes with that project manager and understand why. That conversation is one step in a rollout. Here is the checklist, built from a live Beyond the Bid workshop with change management coach Estie Briggs.

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Why do rollouts stall?

This is very common with JobTread or with any construction project management tool. The owner identifies a problem and buys software to fix it, without a rollout or a roadmap to get the team to adopt it.

The usual causes:

• Morale is low because the implementation was not invested in.
• The owner isn't using it, so buy-in from the top is low.
• One person becomes the bottleneck. Every question, training, and tutorial routes to them.
• Their workload is already past capacity, and they're not getting paid to train anyone.

The rollout checklist

1. The owner uses it. If the owner isn't using it, buy-in is low.
2. Pick two champions. Pick a power user of the existing method. Then pick the person most likely to adopt new tools. It's a pincer approach.
3. Book 15 minutes with every PM who pushes back. Understand why.
4. Ask, then listen. Estie's questions: "Tell me about your job today." "What about your job sucks?" "Show me exactly what's not working." "Where in the process is it slowing you down?"
5. Document what they're doing. In Estie's story, a branch that blamed the software was printing PDFs to rescan them, on bad Wi-Fi.
6. Expect the dip. Estie on the messy middle: "That's where the dip in productivity happens and people freak out."
7. Recognize the wins in public. Estie: "One of the best things you can do is publicly recognize the wins that people are having."
8. Act on feedback, and credit the person. When someone's idea makes it into the setup, recognize the person who had that idea.

What to watch for

The PM who pushes back is often afraid of losing autonomy: their responsibilities, their role, how the company views them, and their identity. Step 3 is how you find out.

Estie's sign that the crew owns the tool: "It becomes something that they can't work without. They're like, don't take this from me."

The full story

For the PM conversation, the designer who'd been doing it since high school, and Estie's stalled rollout, read the full post on Beyond the Bid: How do I get my crew to actually use new software?

Watch the full workshop with Estie Briggs

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