SmartSheet Adoption

kmingain

I am sharing with approximately 80 users and about 15% actually login and look at the dashboard, click on issues, risks and attachments - never mind download the attachments.

Has anyone experienced this resistance to adoption before and if so, how did you overcome it? 

Thanks,



Karen

sdkotes12901

Karen:

We do not use dashboards but wish we did, so I am not sure whether my input will be helpful. You may already be using the top helps I reference, but I thought I would chime in.

Since I am not allowed to write up users for not cooperating, I have done the following to get my very non-project minded managers to view and update their project sheets:

[Assumption: Your users are assigned to tasks across multiple sheets.]

1. Use recurring update requests - be sure to include attachments. You will be able to see attachments and users can add attachments. (Cumbersome because update requests must be created by sheet and recreated when new tasks/action items/issues/risks are assigned to users. Ahem Smartsheet!)

2. Use a web form for adding new items - again include attachments option if applicable if users will not use a sheet. (I get it that sheets are overwhelming when you open them.)

3. Include a "Parent" column (where you can join ancestors) which will help in the update requests web form to orient users to which sheet they are responding to - if you have users assigned across multiple sheets. Formula for Row 1: =[Task Name]$1. Formula for subsequent rows: =JOIN(ANCESTORS([Task Name]2), " > ").

4. While not conventional "PMI" practice or PM process, I include the following subsections (where applicable) in each phase on my projects (where "for..." is the task name of the phase): Action Items Log for...; Activity Log for...; Lessons Learned for...; Issues For...

5. From my "Type" droplist I use use the following options for each of the above subsections so that I can then filter update requests, reports, or my sheets by the type for monitoring and update requests.

Activity Log = Note, Email, Phone Call, Working Session

Action Items = Action Item

Lessons Learned = Note

Issues = Action Items (as someone needs to address the issues and risks)

6. Assignees get their own reports across all sheets using their contact name and these types: Action Item, Task, Issue, Risk. Reports have only Parent, Task Name, Notes, Start, Due, Finish Dates, % Complete, Attachments, Alert.

7. Project owners get an all-inclusive report  for their direct reports across all sheets using same filters: Action Item, Task, Issue, Risk. Same columns included.

8. Project Sponsor gets an all-inclusive report across all sheets regardless of the project owner or assignee when a line item has an alert. Same columns included + "Project Owner" "Assigned To #1" "Assigned To #2" and "Assigned To #3"

If we had the business plan, my not so project-minded managers would be all over a dashboard. 

Reach out to me if you are interested in commiserating or collaborating.

Good Luck!

Sandy

Brad Jones

Your people don't like it because they have to login to a platform to see it, and on top of that it doesn't even have live graphs/charts for the data.  Who actually enjoys reading a dashboard like that?

Text=boring and slow, Live Graphs = interesting and contextual.

I've built dozens of graphs through SS using their SS Labs Charts, and had to build about 8 new graphs per project that were identical to the last 8 graphs of the last 12 projects.  Hours of work, and you can't share them in one place.

With PowerBI, you can create a dashboard with interactive graphs, then copy/paste it to a new tab, and with about 10 clicks re-create it for another project workspace.  It's really that simple.  Then just embed the iframe into a webpage and your users can access the data without logging in to anything new.

Plus, every time I show our PowerBI dashboards to people the universal reaction is "wow".  That will get you some points, and get people engaged in your dashboards.

Good luck.

Andrée Starå

Hi,

I'm very excited about this update that the SS team is working on.

Will probably make it a lot easier to get everyone interested in the dashboards and more. 

Look here:

https://twitter.com/Smartsheet/status/910603418867081216

Best,

Andrée