Big launch: agile project management & experience-driven mindset

One of the largest projects I led was a launch of a content management platform Showpad across our Sales & Marketing teams - building everything from A to Z, onboarding & driving adoption among 80+ AEs over 3 months with 60%+ using the tool weekly. To give some context on the complexity of the project:

• It was a?complete bet: we had no idea how to do it & if it is going to work at all: Will sales use it? Will marketing use it? Will it bring value to both?
• Ambition was high: instead of launching a 2 month pilot with 20 AEs , we decided to go bold & gradually roll-out the platform to all the crews, so everyone could equally benefit from the solutions straight away.
• Timing was tough: We started the implementation at the beginning of sales season, which made pressure high to launch it on a very short schedule to leverage the solution still before the season end & at the same time, adoption effort - quite challenging to fight for sales attention during busy season.

In Russia we have a saying “The eyes are afraid but the hands are doing it anyway”, - that is how I certainly felt during the 1st weeks of launch. Thankfully, I quickly realised that the traditional approach to project management was not that useful considering high level of uncertainty combined with tight deadlines.

While I did always have a vision and North Star metric in mind, I relied on a?more iterative & agile project management?& “learning by doing”.

• I focused on a?gradual roll-out?to different sales segments launching one segment at a time. It allowed me to closely focus on their specific needs, making sure it all works & the set-up is customised enough for the team. Only then would I move to the next segment handing over ownership of follow up & support to my allocated & trained ambassadors.
• Conducting short experiments?to see what works best & betting only on things that do work. I applied this logic to everything from building a content library to defining training & adoption strategy for different sales segments.

For example, considering the context, I made a big bet on an?async training?focusing on essentials only, trusting that our sales are smart enough & the product is intuitive enough so they could figure it out all on their own. While it was certainly against the guidance we received from the implementation team on the vendor side, it worked for us.

???"Very well documented, super clear"

We even experimented with async training?distribution?method based on team preferences: some busiest teams just received daily 5 min reminders to watch a video training straight to their calendars, and they just loved it!

???"Delightful and smooth onboarding - Easy to do, with only a few clicks"

Check out all 5 lessons learned over 1 year as Product Marketer at Alan