IDEAS INTO ACTION: IMPLEMENTING NEW IDEAS
Your project management team’s brainstorming sessions no doubt produce a number of good ideas on streamlining operations and improving current practices. Unfortunately, those concepts won’t do you much good if you don’t make the effort to act on them. Take advantage of your team’s hard work—carve out the time to put together a strategy for pulling the best ideas off the list and making them part of your reality. Once you’ve identified good ideas and vetted them for viability, you now need to incorporate them into your existing practices. We’ve outlined some important steps below to help streamline the implementation process.
1 – Identify who will be affected by the change you’re about to make. Yes, your team was involved in vetting the idea initially, but think beyond your Project Team. Are there stakeholders who will need to change how they do things? Will processes outside your group require a revamp as well? Those teams may need time to update their own practices, so begin working with them now to help make the full-scale transition effective and efficient.
2 – Communicate the plan. Various members of your Project Team were likely involved in vetting, evaluating, and developing the innovation you’re about to implement, but there are also sure to be some who weren’t part of the process. Bring those people into the loop, so when the change goes live you have everyone’s support and involvement.
3 – Tweak. With the entire team now on board with the upcoming changes, there’s a good chance you’ve received some last-minute input on how to move forward. This isn’t the time to dig in your heels. Instead, incorporate those final suggestions to make the changes not only as effective as possible, but also to ensure the entire team is enthusiastic about the new practices and committed to seeing them succeed.
Provided by PMAlliance a project management consulting, and project management training company.
