When I teach people how to roll out software I advise them WHAT TO DO to succeed in software rollouts. This time let’s look at 7 things that you SHOULD NOT DO as part of software rollout management.

1. Don’t assume that it’s all only about your rollout – when you start managing a new software rollout project it may be tempting to fully focus on your project and forget about the organizational environment. But an organization is a complex ‘ecosystem’ and each project or initiative is influenced by organizational environment. Key parts of the organizational environment that you should understand and take into account are organizational culture, leadership, processes, organizational structure and other change projects.

2. Don’t make all decisions on your own – rollout means a change and to ensure that all decisions are made based on accurate data and that employees are committed to the rollout you should involve them in the decision making throughout the rollout and you should make the decisions based on their input.

3. Don’t be silent – rollout is a change, so don’t expect it to be easy. Usually there will be smaller or bigger challenges in a rollout and many of them will directly impact end users and sometimes you might feel like you’d rather be silent about them than to inform the target audience. Here’s one simple rule to follow – bad news is better than no news. No news encourages people to make assumptions by themselves. These assumptions are often worse than the reality. Based on these assumptions they will decide what to do; because of your silence they won’t receive communication with expected actions from you. Their chosen activities may lead them to move against not towards your rollout vision.

Assumptions also cause rumours. Rumours spread like wild fire and may cause serious issues for people’s commitment to take the software into use. Eliminating rumours will require an extensive communication effort – much higher than communicating consistently.

4. Don’t lie – whatever happens don’t lie. You need to be honest but positive. Positivity will encourage people to contribute in the rollout even if there are issues. But lies will soon be found out and when that happens people will lose trust and respect for you and the whole initiative. Without trust and respect it will be really hard or impossible to keep people on board and to roll out the software.

5. Don’t ‘swing in the wind’ – you should work as a software rollout manager only if you fully believe in the initiative you are leading and if you can stand your ground for the initiative. When you work as a rollout manager your mission is to roll out the software, it is not to be a friend or to be liked by everyone.

This might be hard at times, but if you’ll try to be friend and liked by everyone you’ll tend to do what people ask you. Because as a rollout manager you’ll face a lot of resistance people will try to get their way and not to do required activities. If you try to work in everyone’s favour you won’t be able to work towards the rollout vision consistently because you’ll ‘swing in the wind like a tree’. As a result people will not take you seriously anymore. They’ll see that there are ways around the rollout requirements and they’ll stop doing what you ask.

6. Don’t start your work too late – Often a software rollout manager is assigned and software rollout planning starts right before the rollout. This is too late to start planning the rollout. To ensure that a rollout succeeds actions essential for a software rollout should be started from the original decision making. There are also essential steps to do as part of the software implementation that will determine the success of the rollout. For instance, the target audience and stakeholders should be involved from the original decision making and throughout the implementation. In that way you can ensure that the original decision is made based on accurate data and that they will be committed to the rollout when it starts.

7. Don’t stop when the rollout goal is achieved – it may be tempting to celebrate the victory too early. However, even once the rollout target adoption rates are achieved there is a chance for slip back. Therefore it is essential to handover to the business as usual phase those rollout activities that will continue to monitor and control the rollout and that will take any corrective action if needed.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. Please, share what are your ‘don’ts for software rollouts’ in the comments below. Or let me know, if you have any questions regarding this blog post. I’ll try to answer personally as many questions as I can.

To your software rollout success!