Lesson 2 of 10 · 8 min

Building the project team and winning technicians over

Written by Melek Mehrez, founder of FreeMaint · Last reviewed October 11, 2026

Lesson objective

By the end of this lesson, you can name the five roles of a CMMS project team, assign the project tasks with a RACI matrix and plan how technicians take part from the first week.

Most CMMS projects that fail do not fail because of the software. They fail because the people who were meant to use it every day never adopted it: technicians kept their notebooks, requesters kept phoning, and the system slowly fell out of use.

This lesson builds the team that prevents this. You will name who decides, who leads and who speaks for each group of users, and you will bring technicians into the project from the first week rather than at the last training session.

The five roles of a CMMS project team

Even a small site needs these five roles. In a plant with a single maintenance manager, one person often holds two of them. That is fine, as long as every role has a name next to it.

Who does what in a CMMS project
Role	Usually held by	Responsibilities
Sponsor	Plant or operations manager	Sets the goals, provides time and budget, settles conflicts between maintenance and production
Project lead	Maintenance manager or planner	Runs the plan, prepares decisions, keeps the schedule
Key users	One person per user group: technicians, requesters, stores, planning	Test the software on real cases, adapt the forms, train their colleagues
Field champions	A respected technician in each team or shift	Answer first questions on the floor, report what does not work
IT and support functions	IT, purchasing, finance	Accounts and access, phones and network, contract, data protection

The sponsor matters more than it seems. When production wants a machine on the day of its preventive task, someone with authority has to say which goal comes first. Without a sponsor, the project loses each of these small disputes, and the plan slowly gives way to emergencies.

Divide the work with a RACI matrix

A RACI matrix lists the project tasks in rows and the roles in columns. In each cell, a letter says how the role takes part: Responsible (does the work), Accountable (approves the result and answers for it), Consulted (gives input beforehand) or Informed (is told afterward).

Excerpt from a RACI matrix for a CMMS project
Task	Sponsor	Project lead	Key users	Field champions
Set goals and the baseline	A	R	C	I
Audit current practices	I	A	R	C
Choose the software	A	R	C	C
Build the asset hierarchy	I	A	R	C
Train technicians	I	A	R	R

Two rules keep the matrix useful: exactly one A per task, and at least one R. A task with two people accountable has nobody accountable, and a task with nobody responsible will not get done. Review the matrix once with the whole team, then again at each change of phase.

Win technicians over before the software arrives

Technicians judge a CMMS by one question: will it help me or watch me? If the first message they hear is that every minute will now be recorded, they will record as little as possible. If they see it remove phone calls, paperwork and missing information, they will use it.

1
Involve them in the audit
Ask technicians how a job really flows today. They know the workarounds that no procedure describes, and lesson 3 needs them.
2
Explain the why with their own problems
The part that is never in stock, the breakdown nobody reported, the job done twice. A goal that solves one of these is a goal they will defend.
3
Let them test the forms
A form field that cannot be filled in on a phone, with gloves, in a noisy area will be skipped. Field champions try every form before it reaches the whole team.
4
Promise little, keep every promise
If the project says requests will stop arriving by phone, make sure the request flow works before go-live. One broken promise costs more trust than ten kept promises earn.

Example

The project team at the packaging plant

At the packaging plant from lesson 1, the plant manager becomes sponsor and commits to attending a 30-minute review every month. The maintenance manager leads the project and blocks every Thursday for it.

The most respected technician on each shift becomes field champion. The production supervisor of the filling lines joins as key user for requesters, since most requests come from there; the storekeeper is key user for spare parts, and the plant's IT contractor handles accounts and phones.

In the first week, the maintenance manager spends an hour with each technician to walk through how a breakdown is handled today. Two problems come up every time: requests lost on the whiteboard and parts missing at the start of a job. They become the project's first two promises.

Five common mistakes

Choosing the software in the office, then announcing it to the floor.
A sponsor in name only, who never attends a review.
A project lead with no time freed up for the project.
Field champions picked for their availability rather than for their credibility with colleagues.
Training everyone the week before go-live, with nobody to ask afterward.

In FreeMaint

Included in Core (free)

Roles are sets of permissions, not job titles

In FreeMaint, People › Roles lists the default roles, from administrator to requester. Duplicate the closest one and adjust its permissions to fit a key user or a field champion. Users are unlimited on every plan, including the free one, so the whole project team can take part in the trial from day one.

Read the documentation

Template for this lesson

CMMS project RACI matrix

Excel (.xlsx), blank, with automatic checks