How to Get 99% Adoption on Your Next IT Project

(Guest post by Kaitlin McCready)

Most IT projects are built for people.

The requirements are gathered. The design is user-tested. The training is scheduled. And—adoption stalls, workarounds multiply, and the ROI exists only in the business case document.

Here's what's usually missing: people don't know why the change is happening. And they don't yet want it to.

Awareness of the change is the most skipped step in IT change. Prosci's change management research names it as the number one reason employees resist—not because they oppose the solution, but because no one made a compelling case for why it was needed. And awareness alone isn't enough. There's a critical gap between employees who accept a change and those who actively want it. That gap—between compliance and desire—is where most implementations fail.

The common thread I’ve seen when things go sideways: the people most affected by a change are treated as recipients of it rather than co-creators of it.

When I joined Jacobs, 12,000 project delivery employees were overhauling their project management systems. We didn't just communicate the change—we integrated change management directly into the PMO. We ran "voice of customer" and "voice of employee" sessions during requirements gathering, asking not just about functionality but about how people wanted to be involved. Stakeholder maps and personas shaped system design, training, and communications from the start.

One example: we built champion networks. Mid-level managers—one group per product—representing the 12,000 employees impacted. They got early beta access, extra time with senior leaders, and advanced technology training. The goal was simple: build bottom-up trust by bringing in the people employees turn to first.

The question I'd ask any IT leader: at what point in your project do the people most affected actually have a hand in shaping it?

The answer should be before the project actually starts.

Because when they do, awareness of the change becomes understanding—and understanding becomes desire. Our approach proved itself: 99 percent product adoption across 10 global business units. A 92 percent training effectiveness rating across 6,000 employees globally. And $35M in cost savings enabled by true behavior change.

People don't resist change because they're difficult. They resist because they don't see themselves in it—because it's happening to them, not with them.

Building with people is how you close the gap between deployment and adoption.