As organizations grapple with the lighting fast speed of change powered by advancements in AI, tech professionals who help employees adopt new systems and improve their daily work can build a stronger case for advancement into project management, business transformation and technology leadership.
A system can pass its technical checks while employees continue using spreadsheets, invent workarounds or avoid features intended to save time. Understanding why those problems occur—and helping resolve them—extends an IT professional’s contribution beyond configuring and deploying software.
Suresh Sigera, lead instructor at technology training provider General Assembly, says adoption problems often stem from poorly timed training, processes that add work without an obvious benefit or managers who never supported the change.
“Often nobody asked the people doing the work what they actually needed,” he explains.
Professionals who understand both the system and its users can identify those problems before they undermine an implementation.
“That person becomes more valuable than someone who can only configure the software, because they help the company get a return on what it spent,” Sigera says.
Practice Within an Existing Project
Building change-management experience can begin with small responsibilities on an implementation already underway. Sigera recommends focusing first on listening to users, explaining changes without jargon and planning who needs information at each stage of a rollout.
Listening involves understanding employees’ concerns as well as their requests. Communication should explain what will change, why the organization is making the change and how it will affect daily work.
“I’d offer to run a few user check-ins, write the launch email, or sit with a team during their first week on the new system and note where they get stuck,” he says. “None of that needs a special title.”
Those conversations can also improve requirements gathering. Sigera asks employees to demonstrate how they handle tasks, revealing side spreadsheets, shortcuts and steps known only to individuals.
“I also make a point of talking to frontline staff and not just managers, because they often describe the work completely differently,” he explains.
He recommends including skeptics in pilots and observing their behavior rather than depending entirely on surveys.
“A problem I find with ten users is much cheaper to fix than one I find with five hundred,” Sigera says.
Test the Workflow, Not Just the Software
Deepak Kinger, chief strategy officer and co-founder of automation software provider EvoluteIQ, recommends extending stakeholder interviews beyond project sponsors to frontline employees, downstream teams and risk owners.
“Requirements gathering captures what a process is meant to do,” he says. “What it rarely captures is what people actually do to make that process work, and that is where stakeholder interviews and pilots earn their place.”
Asking someone to walk through a recent difficult case can uncover informal controls, duplicate entry and responsibilities missing from a process map. Professionals should explore where work stalls, which workarounds employees rely on and what would make them trust the proposed system.
Kinger recommends establishing baseline performance and success measures before a pilot, then tracking actual usage, feedback and problems.
An automated reporting tool, for example, might process information correctly but require employees to change several established steps to use its output. Testing the full workflow can reveal whether that additional effort outweighs the intended savings.
“Interviews explain why problems occur, while pilots help validate whether proposed solutions address them,” he says.
The findings can inform design, training and deployment decisions. Developers can improve usability, analysts can refine workflows and project managers can coordinate the changes needed across teams.
“Project managers and technology leads can drive stakeholder alignment, manage resistance and measure adoption beyond go-live,” Kinger says.
Treat Resistance as Useful Evidence
John Lullen, director of marketplace inclusion at TEKsystems, says technical professionals should develop active listening, communication and critical-thinking skills.
“As AI becomes more embedded in how we work, the ability to ask the right questions is more important than having the right answers,” he explains.
That requires considering how technology affects employees, including whether they understand its purpose and have enough training to use it. Testing with a smaller group gives staff a voice before the broader rollout and demonstrates that their feedback can influence decisions.
“Resistance shouldn't automatically be viewed as an unwillingness to change,” Lullen says. “It's often a signal that employees don't understand the value of a new system or have legitimate concerns about how it will affect their work.”
He recommends approaching those conversations openly, investigating the underlying problem and identifying where adjustments are possible.
Sigera makes that response concrete: document the issue, assign ownership and tell employees what will happen and approximately when. If a fix is not possible, explain why and provide a workaround.
A missing report, slower task or poorly targeted training may warrant changes to the implementation rather than additional pressure on users.
“Pretending a real flaw isn’t there is the fastest way I know to lose trust,” he says.
Turn Adoption Results into Career Evidence
Professionals seeking broader responsibilities should document what changes after deployment, including feature use, support demand, task completion times and whether employees stop relying on the old system.
Sigera keeps user feedback alongside those measures, particularly from people who initially doubted the change. He also records the adjustments he makes in response.
“I note what I changed based on feedback, because that shows judgment, not just follow-through,” he adds.
Kinger recommends connecting adoption measures to operational results, such as faster invoice processing or customer onboarding. Before-and-after comparisons of manual effort, errors and productivity can demonstrate value beyond login counts.
For Lullen, a record of consistent usage and improvements driven by feedback helps establish that a professional can lead people through change as well as deliver technology.
“Successful adoption goes beyond whether a system is deployed on time or employees have completed their training,” he says.
Candidates should be specific about the challenges they help overcome and how their actions improve the employee experience. That evidence can support a move toward responsibilities spanning business teams and technical delivery.
“These skills can create opportunities to move into IT project management, business transformation, change management and broader technology leadership roles,” Lullen says.
