Project Management: Threats from Using New Technology

One of the most exciting parts of being a project manager is bringing new technology to your business. Expanded capabilities, efficiencies, and new ways in which you can help your stakeholders often depend on new technology. It’s not all joy and playtime, however, with great opportunities come notable threats. Here are some of the more common risks to be aware of when deploying new technology:?

Becoming an unofficial beta tester. While vendors are usually diligent about testing a product before selling it, pressures to bring a product to market can lead to shortcuts. While it may appear that a new product will work, it might not have been thoroughly tested in your specific technological or physical environment. In that case, you could become an unofficial beta tester! Take extra care to ensure the new technology you want to incorporate into your project solution has been tested with YOUR environment or technical configuration before committing to its use. Ask your vendor for the list of changes from the formal beta testing and be sure to include extra testing for those areas in your project planning.?

Vendor support training may be lacking. When a new product is released, the vendor should train their support staff to answer questions or address issues. While that training might be quite good, nothing beats dealing with real problems from real customers. Deploying new technology might mean the level of support you receive isn’t quite up to standard, as the vendor learns about real-world support needs. Check with other clients who’ve deployed the technology and ask about the support they’ve received. If that isn’t possible, plan contingencies before you put new technology in the heart of a business-critical product or solution. Good contingency alternatives might be to use current technology until the new tech can be brought up to scratch or negotiate for consultants from your technology vendor to work with you to understand the product and correct issues more efficiently.?

You may have to deal with sceptical stakeholders. Planning for organizational change management is important when deploying new technology. Typically, business processes will have to change to leverage your shiny new technology, and those process changes can intimidate stakeholders. Scepticism amongst your stakeholders can be rampant. Deploy change management and plan extra effort to ensure your stakeholders are aware of the benefits your new technology will bring to their jobs. ?

Don’t leap too far. Deploying new technology for your solution may mean you have to upgrade other technology already in place in your organization, such as operating systems. New hardware or engineering elements may mean you have to change tooling or manufacturing processes. Or, sometimes, taking a leap too far means you try to do too much at once for the business. Implementing new solutions in stages may be your best approach. Make sure you understand the requirements for any upgrades to your existing environment before committing to deploying new technology.?

Additional tips can be found in my project management classes on LinkedIn Learning, including?Project Management: Technical Projects which can be found at: https://www.dhirubhai.net/learning/project-management-technical-projects-2021/what-is-a-technical-project?autoAdvance=true&autoSkip=false&autoplay=true&resume=false&u=2125562

This article belongs to the?Bob’s Reflections newsletter series, which addresses project management, outsourcing and “intelligent disobedience”, a leadership approach. If you want more of this content, you can?subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

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