Picking the right tools for the job

A version of this was first published on LinkedIn

When you first get set up, it’s just as easy to pick a bunch of different products to fulfil the needs of different parts of the business as it is to not look for a sustainable solution... and generating endless, unsustainable spreadsheets, slide decks and documents instead.

Your context and use case matter - things to consider

Especially as a small and growing organization, things to consider before you pick a product:

👉 Make sure you have understood the need and requirements also across business functions(!). For example, a project management tool needs to work for the project team(s), but it also has to serve various reporting functions at portfolio and leadership level. It may even support your finance colleagues in terms of modeling spend!

👉 You need a strategy for familiarizing your team with the tool - they will need to be able to use it! And, importantly, it may push at least some of them out of their comfort zone (“I’ve never done it this way..” or “I have always preferred tool xyz”).

👉 Someone being “stuck” on something they’ve “always used” can lead to some really unnecessary product purchases - and duplications of products or features of products you’re already paying for just because they are not being fully utilized. Take some time to understand their concerns so you can address them - or adjust your plans if you’ve overlooked something.

👉 Related to this, you must have leadership buy in for both the product and - even more importantly - the purpose it serves. There’s really no use having a shiny, perfect project management tool if the team and/or leadership don’t believe project management can and will be helpful in implementing strategy and meeting goals!

👉 Know what data the product captures as well as what data it needs, and how and in what format both go in and out of it. You must assess who will be responsible for and/or use the data at each end, and make sure that responsibility is (a) clear to all involved and (b) those responsible have sufficient bandwidth for the related tasks as well as getting credit for them!

👉 To understand the data ins and outs in your likely rapidly growing ecosystem, *map your data flows*. Make sure your mapping shows the processes behind this, too, including who is actually manually updating that Google spreadsheet that still sits in the middle of a critical workflow…!

👉 Last but not least, will the product scale? What does the license model look like and how flexible is it as the organization grows and changes and learns? Who will make sure everyone has the necessary permissions, and keep that updated, and who will onboard new colleagues? If someone leaves, what happens to the data they added to the system?

Whether you find this helpful or have feedback, questions or additional thoughts, I would love to hear from you: consult@steffisuhr.com