In project management terms, a constraint is a known factor that can limit or shape how a project is planned, executed, and completed. On a somewhat related note, a dependency is a relationship between tasks that indicates one needs to be completed before the other. I bring this up because today at work I had a moment where I felt like I was the potential bottleneck of sorts of sorts for different initiatives. Does that make me a human constraint of some sort, as I inadvertently define the limits for other things? Or maybe I'm just a dependency, and a lot of other tasks are linked to me taking action first.
This largely stems from the fact that I'm one of the main technical resources in the company. Almost all of the software platforms we use are under my purview, and whether or not we're fully utilizing each platform feels like a reflection of how well I've been able to drive user adoption and engagement. Intellectually, I know it's not solely my responsibility to address this, but at the same I can't quite shake off the feeling that nothing's going to happen until I get going and keep pushing other people.
More often than not, I just take this sort of thing in stride. It's just the nature of my role and the fact that a lot of our technical implementations have gone through me. Heck, I've played a major role in selecting many of our digital platforms in the hopes that they'll help drive greater efficiency and whatnot. So yes, I know I have to push things along and get everyone on board. But that last piece is the really hard one as anyone who has had to deal with any form of change management knows by heart.
But yeah, it's a lot. And there are days like this when I just wish that more people were excited about what these platforms can do for us and played a more active role in encouraging others to get fully on board. But I suppose it can't be helped - everyone has other priorities within their respective scopes of influence and those are their main things, in business-speak. Driving software adoption and process adherence can easily be perceived as "extra" work on top of everything else everyone needs to do. And since it doesn't have an immediate impact on our clients, it's also easy to push these things to the back burner because there will always be more urgent fires and whatnot.
Anyway, a lot of these questions feel like ones without answers. Or it all boils down to tackling things one at a time and just keeping at it. And of course, the last bit related to getting people to follow suit will ultimately come down to continue to send reminder upon reminder upon reminder and hope things change sooner rather than later.
Comments
Post a Comment