As an IT consultant for more than 10 years now, I have had the opportunity and privilege to be part of many different project teams and work on a wide range of technology projects. Like most of my fellow tech consultants, I can confidently say that IT projects span the entire spectrum – some are small and simple, others are large and complex. Some are concise and well-defined, while others are not. The well-defined projects and ones that deliver excellent technical solutions are more likely to be successful. However, this is not always the case. Ultimately, project success is determined by user adoption, and providing great technology through a well-defined project doesn’t guarantee users will love it.
For example, I was once asked to participate as an outside advisor in the post-project review of a Microsoft SharePoint migration that was supposed to be easy and straightforward, but it turned out not to be. The migration was described by the user community as “sort of successful but extremely painful” and the project team had a hard time articulating why things hadn’t turned out as planned. The project team had strong technical skills and experience completing several similar migration projects successfully in the past. They also had “top shelf” technology at their disposal, so this migration project should have been a slam dunk.
What we determined is that that migration team focused all their efforts on providing an excellent technical solution, but completely overlooked the impact their technology would have on the business activities it was supporting and the people who would be using the solution. They mismanaged the user adoption aspect of the project and ended up providing a solution which wasn’t used and, ultimately, wasn’t sustainable.
One of the pioneers in solving this challenge is my colleague and AvePoint Public Sector CTO Dux Raymond Sy. Dux has a great perspective on how to address this challenge, which combines his unique “Shift Happens” approach and lessons learned from the vast wealth of project experience he and the rest of the AvePoint Client Services (ACS) team have accumulated.
If you are interested in learning more, Dux will be presenting on this topic next Tuesday, February 24, in Chicago, IL, at a special workshop from AvePoint and SharePoint Fest entitled “Beyond SharePoint Deployment: How Can IT Inspire, Motivate, and Drive Sustainable Adoption?” At the event, Dux will take participants through the process of addressing and creating sustainable adoption, both on-premises and in the cloud. The workshop will consider ways to make technology change sustainable, as well as provide tips and techniques which can be applied to any IT project to increase its probability of success.
In Chicago and want to attend? Register today!
For those unable to attend, look for more on this topic soon, both from Dux and other members of the ACS team.
Great Job!
I’ll be in this session at Ignite!
I plan to attend.
I wish I could have attended this in Feb. I bet it was good. Anyone attend and have any thoughts on this?
Will this be at the #MSIgnite conference in May?
Just registered for the May session at the Ignite conference. Looking forward to it!
Definitely looking forward to the Ignite session.
I’ll be at the Ignite session! Adoption is an issue at my organization.
Looking forward to this session myself!
“Ultimately, project success is determined by user adoption, and providing great technology through a well-defined project doesn’t guarantee users will love it.”
One giant YES here. Org culture is so important. Sometimes you have to get out of your own way to really see the needs of the people you serve, even if you’ve got all these shiny wonderful things that you just know will make their lives better.
Looking forward to this at Ignite!
We identified user adoption is one of the great challenges of any SharePoint related project. We have talked with our AvePoint colleagues on many occasions about user adoption curves and how they limit both the success of the project and the willingness of clients to move their platform forward and invest in new technologies (such as AvePoint), solutions etc.
We initially developed our Embed programme, with a framework of activities that clients/organisations should embark on from go live onwards, which we offered as a paid for service; we actually switched that are offering it as a free framework which organisations can undertake themselves. We give that anybody who asks these days.
I look forward to the session.
i am attending ignite and very interested in hearing about the cloud use of SharePoint and its benefits
Come and find one of us. We operate a Pay it Forward policy – so I’ll tell you everything I can possibly come up with in the hope you find it useful.
There is usually a match making tool on the Ignite site – look me up
simon.hudson@cloud2.co.uk
I love that more people are covering adoption as a topic. I think there is a myth that only providing training and communication will achieve strong end user adoption, when those activities are just a means to the end of helping people through transitions, e.g., change.
Erica, I totally agree.
I have far too many organisations and people who either stop at the technology, or think that training is a solution to getting users up to speed with everything that the technology can provide.
There’s probably some great psychology to be studied in how to move users through technology related change, but we haven’t looked at that.
The following, however, is a list of the things that we encourage our clients to plan for as part of their adoption programme; I be interested in anything else that people do:
RSA / maturity
Governance Audit
Vision (Strategic Objectives)
Best Practice WOW
Establish Intranet/Governance Board
Establish / Run Embed Team
Clinics – Individual Needs & opportunities
Training Sessions – Group Needs
Tummerler promotion – identify and support
Set up User Community
Clinics / Lunch and Learn
Role Based Continuous Improvement
Feedback Monitoring / Progress Tracking
Surveys
Support Plus(Training on Demand)
Go – Live Event
Development Triage
Looking forward to this presentation
Looking forward to this workshop on user adoption & migration!
looking forward to this one ..
Looking forward to checking this out at Ignite.
Looking forward to checking this out at Ignite.
Sustainable is the key! I see this session on the Ignite site but not by Dux? I am looking forward to his presentation on Embracing BYOD.
Will be there at Ignite. We need to motivate some people I know to adopt a few things. 🙂
It would be great if AvePoint could do something in Sydney Australia one day! We do drink a lot down under however.