Change is evident in today’s world, especially when it comes to technology. We cannot hide from it, as we constantly see change in applications that we use on a daily basis both at work and at home. More often than not when it comes to implementing a new system that is going to be a change to end users, our initial focus is what are the key tasks, milestones, and dates that need to be met in order to be successful and then later you think about how will my end users will be impacted. This should be reversed; we first need to think about how our end users will be affected, who should communicate the change, and how are you going to support the decision to change. All of those fall into what I call being “deployment ready”.

This topic of deployment readiness is the first part of a three-part series around enablement. My fellow Cloud Success Managers will cover the topics of pilot testing and production rollout in future posts.

The decision to do a pilot test of a new system before performing a massive rollout is key to success but prior to starting a pilot, there are decisions that should happen which will help with a smooth implementation and rollout.  Below are some key tasks that should happen to help you be “deployment ready” before you even start a project:

1: Identify a sponsor

Identify a sponsor (leader) who has influence over your end your groups and can set expectations. This should be someone that is in a management role at your organization, which could be a manager, director, or even better a top-level executive. A sponsor needs to be supportive of the change be willing to be part of the first phase of adoption, lead by example. There might be a need to have more than one sponsor especially for large organizations in which each sponsor would be responsible with the messaging to their specific business units or teams.

2: Understand the change and how it will impact your end users

Perform an assessment to identify what will change for each of your end users. Will there be minimal change or a massive change to their daily workflow? The answer to this question will help drive what type of training and communication efforts will be needed and should uncover any possible negative pushback that could follow from your end users.

3: Define your success metrics

When implementing a new system to your end users you need to decide upfront what does success look like. Focus on what your adoption success would be when it comes to usage, end-user buy-in, and how fast to deploy. Establishing milestones and timelines around user adoption is key to defining a successful rollout.

4: Designate User Champions

User Champions will be your ally when it comes to your rollout to end users. I suggest that these champions should be peers of the end users and people that your end users consider as subject matter experts within their department or team. These champions should be identified early and by management. Defining what their specific role will be, what management’s expectation is from them, and what their outcomes will be during implementation and deployment will be critical to having a successful user champion program. User Champions roles can consist of being subject matter experts in the new system, conduct your end-user trainings, or to simply just help with the communication to your end users. A key outcome that champions can deliver to management and sponsors is what are they hearing “out in the field” from the end users in regards to the change, which I would expect to be both positive and negative feedback. This can be invaluable knowledge that will be beneficial to management and the sponsor(s) in which could enable decisions to make changes based on feedback.

Performing those four tasks prior to even starting implementation will help you move in the right direction of being successful when rolling out a change that will impact your end users.

Stay tuned for the next blog in our series!

Allen Dowdle
Sr. Cloud Success Manager