Align the Software Rollout Communication to Succeed

Communication is one of the key tools we use to lead and succeed in software rollouts. And you can’t succeed in it if you work alone. – Communicating successfully is like being part of an orchestra where everyone has to be aligned with the others or the whole performance will be ruined.

To succeed it is essential to continuously align the rollout communication with the communication of the other ongoing initiatives in your organization or the performance of the company and individual initiatives will be harmed. The alignment should be achieved through the relevant governance processes at a company level and by continuous cooperation between the project managers and team members of the ongoing initiatives.

Aligning the communication is essential because in this way you can:

Use communication from individual initiatives to support other initiatives. Together you are stronger! And the target audience and stakeholders will see that all initiatives work towards a common vision and goals.
Mitigate the possibility that ongoing initiatives will communicate conflicting information
Balance the amount of communication that is targeted towards the same target groups to avoid overloading employees with communication
Balance the amount of work that is required from the same target groups to avoid overloading employees

There should be company level governance mechanisms that help in aligning communication but here’s what you can do at your project level to align the communication of your rollout with the communication of the other ongoing initiatives.

First, find out which ongoing initiatives are related and connected to your rollout project. Then agree together with the leaders of those initiatives an effective way to align the communications, for instance, through regular meetings or written updates. You can also maintain a common high level communication plan for several initiatives.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. I’d be happy to hear how you align the communications of your initiative with the communications of other initiatives in your organization. If you have some useful experiences then please share it in the comments section. Also let me know, if you have any questions.

To your software rollout success!