As SharePoint evolves and matures, so will your Change Management needs that govern how SharePoint features and solutions are implemented. The SharePoint Governance Plan should be used as the guide in determining the types of controls that should be in place for different types of changes being considered. The Governance Plan, in conjunction with Change Management policies should be periodically reviewed and updated throughout the organization. Youwill find that some changes in SharePoint will need little, if any, change management controls. Others, however, will need a great deal. These decisions on how much control is necessary will directly affect User Adoption. For example, if you have no controls over deactivating certain features of a Site Collection, there will come a time in which a group of users that were using those features will become very disgruntled since they were depending on those features in their day-to-day duties. Similarly, activating a feature that consumes many resources (e.g., CPU, storage, etc.) could potentially negatively affect other corporate systems and the people managing those systems.Lastly, User Adoption among the workforce will be severely impacted if the environment is over-controlled. In these cases, the end users will become disgruntled when they believe there is too much red-tape / bureaucracy when trying to make what they view as something very simplistic. For example, putting too many controls over access requests, document library settings, etc. will negatively affect User Adoption.
There are four phasesAwareness – Goal is knowing and understanding Focus – demonstrate value, build anticipation and minimize surprisesDeployment – Goal is acceptance and wanting Focus – Accelerate demand and minimize disruptionUsage & Availability – Goal is Mastering and self-belief in the capabilities Focus – Gain productivity, reinforce key concepts and introduce new scenariosOngoing Adoption – Goal is do and keep doing Focus – enhance productivity, continued followership
These are ‘SharePoint’ adventurers, they don’t mind taking risks, they like to play, and they don’t mind failures; some call them mavericks. These are not the kind of people that you want to act as stewards to get others to use the product, so try not to immediately involve them; rather, they should be identified very quickly. They should be given access to a sandbox environment that allows them to get a flavor for SharePoint features and where there is no risk of downtime to a production environment. You should try to involve them in the design stages, and spend time in training best practice in terms of using SharePoint. When doing this, try to evangelize to them the key areas of what the solution is intending to solve, and encourage them to try out features relating directly to those. Note these are not the key adopters, many times they are classified as ‘geeks’, and their end-goals may not be yours in terms of trying to get all users productively using and learning to use the intended solution.
These are people who need to have a business requirement solved by the use of SharePoint. They command respect from their peers, and as such should be involved as early as possible. So, like innovators, involve these people early, but ensure that their requirements are captured in the solution being provided. It is important to try to get the SharePoint project sponsor and key stakeholders as “members” of this group. You should also ensure that they are able to trial the solution in the UAT (User Acceptance Test) environment and that you capture, in detail, those requirements.
Early Adopters become part of the Early Majority Adopters. These are respected users of the solution and, like Early Adopters are critical to the success of the solution. You should immediately identify SharePoint Champions from these and ensure that training includes labs, and that you continually meet to identify any pain points and success stories. Communicate these to Early Adopters to get them on-board more quickly.
These are people who have not been part of the solutions implementation. They may have been introduced by ‘attrition’; told “Drop whatever you was using … You will use SharePoint from now on”; or through some other reason such as “I have just joined the company and been told to use SharePoint and have no idea what it is”. Connections must be made with Early Adopters, and using the materials gained through the creation of policies and the creation of SharePoint Champions so that these Late Majority Adopters can get aid and comfort
With any SharePoint solution you will have those users who will resist having to use the product. These ‘Hanger Backs’ are people who hate change and strive for the traditional. They fear the use of the replacement solution or new solution because either (a) they have not been involved and/or (b) they do not want to be trained due to political reasons, etc. Do not attempt to force the solution upon these users. Communicate to these users the success stories that you have gathered from the Early Majority adopters. Use the SharePoint Champions to aid that communication. Do not take any resistance from the Hanger Backs as a message that the solution has failed
Founding member of BuckeyeSPUG (COSPUG)Been working with SharePoint since 200515 years of IT experienceLead a team of 45 SharePoint consultantsProfessional Scrum MasterSix Sigma CertifiedSharePoint Saturday Speaker and OrganizerDog Food Conference Planning Committee
I hope you found this to be interesting and useful.Thanks for coming.Wait for the applause to build….Let me just tell you how you can contact me, and then I’ll take questions.
