blog.frederique.harmsze.nl my world of work and user experiences

Last month I already posted some lessons learned about user adoption. Now I have bumped into a few more things that I want to take into account next time. Some things that worked nicely and that we should repeat and some that offer definite room for improvement….

See the previous post for the other lessons I learned, and here’s the next batch:

1.Get a sense of the users and their needs

Who are the people who are supposed to be using the tools you are trying to get adopted? What do they need? What’s in it for them? Before the tool is bought in the first place, the decision makers should know what it is for. But this information should be known to all stakeholders, in sufficient detail to make it work.

We held intake discussions with all department heads at HQ before we scheduled training sessions with their departments. This worked well: it helped us to determine what these users need and how the tools could help them.

However, what was less clear was how the broader employee groups would be involved: would the logistics people also have access to the tools? The people working in the shops? Or only their managers? Are the tools only for the information workers at headquarters? Or are they for everyone at a later stage? Not only did we not involve those groups, but also we could not answer the questions of the training participants who collaborate, for example, with the people in the shops. And that was a pity.

2.Determine what you want to achieve and make it measurable

Before you start organizing training sessions and other adoption activities, determine what you are trying to achieve: when will the adoption program have been successful? When are the decision makers, the people who pay for the program, happy with the result?

In our program, we kept track of the number of training sessions and the number of people who participated. And we asked the participants to fill in a survey with questions like “Are you going to apply what you learned in your work?” and “Does this training help you to collaborate in a more clever way?” to tell us how they felt about the training sessions and the tools.

However, we did not get enough information to allow the decision makers to decide what should be the next step. And they are still not sure what they want to know before they can make that decision. But is clear that we are not measuring if and to what degree the users are actually benefiting from the new tools, nor what they would need to go to the next level. How about the Office 365 Adoption Pack in Power BI for example (which should become available by the end of March, to see how much the tools are actually used and there is an increase?

3.Organize sessions per team

Sessions per team can work well, because they allow the teams to discuss what would work best for them. One size does not fit all teams, because they do not have the same jobs and they do not have the same needs.

We organized a session per team and we had an intake meeting with the team lead beforehand, to discuss the team’s needs and the most relevant agenda for the session. Then we saw in the sessions that the participants started to brainstorm how they could use the new tools as a team. For example, do their team meeting as a Skype meeting. Put their meeting notes in a OneNote notebook within their joint team site. Some teams loved Skype’s chat functionality, while other loathed it and decided on the spot that they would not use it for now. Fair enough, whatever works for them.

It can be tricky if the team members who share a training sessions have very different levels of Office 365 savviness. We explained the possible tension with the team leaders and they all decided that the team should still all join the sessions, even if some people already knew a lot. The more savvy team members were able to help their colleagues and bring up ideas on how to use the tools. And we had an assistant trainer, who helped out the less savvy team members who got stuck on something that was uninteresting for the others. We were quite happy with the way that worked.

4.Don’t overdose

A training session of 3 hours in which you try to explain everything to users who don’t know anything about the tools yet is not effective. They simply won’t be able to absorb everything… Two sessions of an hour and a half would work better.

We got feedback from the participants that the 3 hour sessions were rather overwhelming. Especially the less savvy team members were struggling to keep up. However, the planners made it clear that it was not possible to plan two short sessions instead of one long session for each team.

So what we tried to do is at least give the participants a sense in what way they could collaborate more effectively and easily using the new tools. And reassure them that nobody expected them to remember everything… If they want to retrieve details that they had missed or forgotten, they can check the help pages and videos we created or ask a colleague. And yes, we got quite a few questions ourselves, via mail, Skype or encounters in the cafeteria.

5.An adoption program is not a one-off activity

A good adoption program is not just one series of training sessions, or one communication campaign. In some cases that might be enough, but don’t count on it.

As I just mentioned, we had planned one series of training sessions.. But quite a few people contacted us afterwards with questions. Some people asked us to explain something again. But most asked for follow-up, now that they had played with the tools in real life. That is when you find out if you have really understood what’s going on: when you try to apply it yourself.

Unfortunately, nothing has been planned officially. We tried to help the users unofficially. But it was frustrating that we were just supposed to provide training, as opposed to help them to adopt the tools to boost their collaboration.

So to a program to increase adoption of Office 365 is helpful. We got enough positive feedback from users to make that clear. However, we can improve on the program and make it even more helpful next time.