Roadmap: How to Adopt the Adoption Through Execution Practice
This roadmap describes how to adopt the Adoption Through Execution practice, which helps organizations drive successful adoption of capability improvements by establishing a mentoring program.
Main Description

Introduction

Executing the process -- not defining it -- is the real challenge for organizations focused on capability improvement. Project teams must know where to start, how to proceed, and how to apply the process and tools effectively in real projects. The only process that really matters is the one people actually use. Real change only occurs when peoples' daily habits change, and that requires doing and practicing over time. Change efforts based on "telling and teaching" or coercion almost never succeed. People change when they are motivated to apply the necessary effort.

Getting Started

Establish a mentoring program

Mentoring is the key to successful adoption of process and tools.  Create a Center of Capability organization with well defined mentoring roles to provide deployment support to projects. Experience shows that using mentors is crucial if you want the implementation of a new process to succeed. If you do not have mentors, there is a clear risk that the people on the project will fall back into their old habits.

The mentor acts as a driver of change. It is important that the process mentor understands the significance of being a change driver and makes sure that the work progresses. It is also important that the mentor becomes dispensable and that there is an end to the mentoring effort. Therefore, the mentor needs to transfer both knowledge and responsibilities to members of the project. 

Mentors must cultivate trust by getting to know team members, the problem domain, and project objectives. Unless they are deeply engaged, it is difficult for mentors to add value. Mentors help people focus on doing without having to figuring out what to do. They build confidence in the outcome of a change because they have been successful on other projects. This confidence builds resilience within the team so that it can recover from the inevitable setbacks that will occur during the change effort. Of course, the mentor's ultimate goal is to build enough expertise and confidence within the project team for them to support the new way of working without external help.

Distribute process ownership and demonstrate value

Distribute ownership for the process among project teams adopting the improvements. With this approach teams are more likely to adopt and learn the new process faster. The result is better when the "real experts," those people on the project, evolve it themselves. Evolve process descriptions, tool configurations and usage models incrementally based on lessons learned and feedback from projects.

Demonstrate the value of process and tool improvements in real projects. Show how effective use of the new capabilities helps achieve technical and business results quickly.

Measure the value and success of deployments using metrics

Determine the expected value of mentoring efforts and identify metrics to monitor progress and performance against objectives.

Common pitfalls

  • When there is no concrete mandate to adopt (by project, by date) adoption is at risk. Ensure empowered program management is in place with clear objectives and measures.
  • Confirm sufficient numbers of qualified and skilled mentors to meet adoption objectives. If needed, obtain outside resources or scale back deployment plans.
  • Lack of buy-in from development groups is a common pitfall for process and tool improvement efforts. The Center of Capability must evangelize the improvements and address concerns of managers to generate demand.
  • When mentoring and technology costs are charged to projects, resistance is elevated. Eliminate this barrier to adoption by funding mentoring and adoption costs at the enterprise level for cost neutrality.
  • Ad hoc mentoring with no structure in place rarely works. Mentoring must be part of these practitioners' formal job responsibilities so that they can give it the proper amount of attention. It should not be a spare time task that they feel obliged to push off in favor of more critical activities. The organization should recognize and reward mentoring as a key leadership skill.
  • Management often expects a high linear rate of adoption, but this is not realistic. Deployment progresses slower initially as configurations and deployment models must be adjusted to facilitate early wins. With the achievement of credible wins, peer endorsements will influence greater acceptance. Nevertheless, at some point demand exceeds skilled deployment capacity, thus limiting the adoption rate. Without separation of deployment, support, and administrative functions, the adoption rate will eventually plateau. However, developing standards, automated administration, and more skilled resources along the way can restore/accelerate the adoption rate.