Software Rollout: Choose a System, Make People Use It

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

The system is bought, paid for and configured. Six months later half the department is still keeping the spreadsheet, because it is faster.

Choosing was the easy fifth of the job

You compared providers, sat through the demonstrations, negotiated something off the price and signed. That part went fine. What nobody planned was everything after: the process the system was meant to serve was never written down, so the configuration encodes whatever the person setting it up assumed. That person has since left and no one knows why a field is named the way it is. Nobody ever asked users where it is awkward, so the workarounds spread quietly. And nothing in anyone's objectives says they have to use it, which means the ones who dislike it simply do not.

What this course covers

Forty-one lessons across the whole implementation, not just the purchase. The process first, because automating a broken one only makes it faster: what a process actually is, mapping the ones that matter, where formalisation helps and where it does damage, input against output against outcome measures, bottlenecks and context switching, quick wins, and specifically when a spreadsheet is the correct answer and when automation is genuinely needed. Then the choice: how systems in the category are classified, where providers are found, what to automate first, writing selection criteria before you watch a single demonstration, selection criteria for a tracking system, negotiating with a provider and getting the discount that is actually available, goal and feedback tooling, learning platforms, collaboration tools, chatbots you can build yourself, systems with intelligence built in, and integrating any of it with the rest. Then the rollout: how people react, the eight mistakes companies repeatedly make, Kotter's eight steps, creating urgency, building the change team, the rider-and-elephant model for why a rational case is not enough, vision and quick wins, and fixing the change into the culture rather than letting it drift. Then survival: capturing how the thing works so it outlives whoever configured it, wikis and knowledge bases, retrospectives on what went wrong, and measuring whether anyone reads any of it. Then honesty: designing a survey people answer truthfully, the length at which answers stop being honest, response rates, reading the open answers, and an action plan with interim measurement. Finally the standard: performance agreements, objectives and cascading, check-ins, four ways to evaluate results, the review meeting, and what follows from it.

Why the examples are people-function systems

The system-selection, knowledge, survey and performance blocks were recorded for that audience, and the categories used as examples are tracking, learning and review systems. That is a working example rather than a limit. Selection criteria, provider comparison, discount negotiation, integration, user resistance and adoption measurement behave identically for any category of software. These particular systems make good examples for one reason: almost every company installs them, and they fail more often than most, because unlike an accounting system nobody is forced to use them.

Who is teaching this

I am Mike. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all 41 lessons

• Active instructor support in the Q&A section

• A Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Working material: process mapping, the input-output-outcome model, selection criteria, the provider negotiation approach, integration planning, the eight implementation mistakes, Kotter's steps, the rider-and-elephant model, knowledge capture methods, questionnaire design, and the performance agreement

• The four fifths of an implementation that come after the signature

Where to start

Find one spreadsheet in your company that duplicates something a paid system already does. Ask the person keeping it why. That answer is the whole course in one sentence. Enrol now and start today.