Get ready for your Airtable launch
Airtable
5 min read
Written by
Airtable
Filed Under
Collaborate with your team
TOPICS
Get ready for your Airtable launch
You may have an idea of how your team could work in Airtable—now let’s work on making it a reality. In this step, we’ll share best practices to prepare for a successful rollout and ensure that your team adopts your new workflow.
1. Define your Airtable launch goals
Even before you share your Airtable base, everyone on your team should understand why you’ve decided to adopt it. When your team understands what Airtable can do and is aligned on why, they’ll be more open to updating the way they work.
Key topics for your team to understand
Here are a few prompts to help you articulate your vision for Airtable. Answer these ahead of time to prepare for your colleagues’ questions:
What goals will Airtable help you achieve? If you’re unsure about this, refer back to the goals you set when designing your workflow.
What challenges or pain points exist in your current process?
How can Airtable help solve each of the pain points listed above?
What does a successful rollout look like to you (and your team)?
How will you measure it?
Take action: Create a launch document
Make a launch document that outlines these pain points, and explains how Airtable will make an impact. You can reference this document throughout your rollout to help you answer questions and communicate this workflow change to your team.
2. Assemble your launch team
Now that you’ve defined your vision for Airtable, it’s time to gather the right team to make it happen. These roles vary depending on the structure and culture of your team, so adapt as you see fit.
Define what’s expected of each stakeholder, and how their role contributes to a successful rollout.
Here are some roles many teams find helpful:
Workflow owner: The person (or people) bringing Airtable to your team. They’re responsible for coordinating all activities to ensure a successful launch. Since you’re reading this guide, there’s a good chance you’re this person. Go you!
Airtable sponsor: Having a team, department, or company leader bought in on the vision for Airtable will help get others on board. Ask your executive sponsor to communicate the goals, vision, and strategy behind your transition to Airtable.
Program manager: The person who can help manage a smooth implementation across workflows. They can help you create resources and set them up in systems.
Technical stakeholder: Familiar with the underlying data your team uses, this person can help you manage and set up user licenses and security controls.
Workflow creators: Team members who already use or “get” Airtable and can help roll it out. We recommend looping in these team members to give feedback, and to help lead internal training sessions, especially for their teams or departments.
Workflow contributors: Work with a few team members who will be actively using Airtable for their daily work to provide feedback as you build your base. This will help ensure you’re building a solution that’s well adopted by the team.
Take action: Identify key stakeholders
Based on the structure of your organization, identify the right colleagues to bring onto your launch team. Note any tasks they can take on to support your Airtable launch.
3. Set a launch date
Once you’ve recruited your launch team, work together to target a launch date. If you already have regular meetings about this workflow, use some of that time to check in on your base. This is a great way to stay aligned with without adding another meeting.
When are you ready to introduce Airtable to the whole team?
This varies by team. Many of our most successful customers work with a select group of team members to build out their base and get it ready for everyone else, which you’ll explore in the next step. Think of it like staging a house—don’t greet your colleagues with empty rooms (or in this case empty tables). Ideally, your base will have a description, tables, example data, and at least one view set up and ready to go.
Congratulations on building your launch plan! Next up, let’s look at how to get your base set up and ready for wider sharing within your organization.
About the author
Airtableis the digital operations platform that empowers people closest to the work to accelerate their most critical business processes. Across every industry, leading enterprises trust Airtable to power workflows in product operations, marketing operations, and more – all with the power of AI built-in. More than 500,000 organizations, including 60% of the Global 2000, rely on Airtable for digital operations and citizen development to help transform how work gets done.
Filed Under
Collaborate with your team
