Adoption Strategies

In this section we will explore some high-level strategies that can be used to promote adoption of the system. These are general techniques for structuring the overall approach for driving adoption. In the sections that follow we will describe some more tactical techniques for driving adoption in the communication and training plans for the site.

Start Small

A major hindrance to adoption is overwhelming the users with features they do not understand or that the organization is not prepared to support. SharePoint is a large (okay, huge!) product. Dumping the entire toolset on a group of unprepared users is like turning a bunch of children loose in a room full of dangerous power tools. The best that you can hope for is that no one touches anything.

Go back to the beginning when the new portal was first proposed. What was the thought process behind it? What problem was the organization trying to solve? Was there some type of content to be created or presented? Was there a regulation to be complied with? Was there a business process to be improved or automated? Once this set of problems has been identified, look for those that are causing the most pain for the organization or the users. These can become the “killer apps” for your portal. Solving these problems can produce the quick wins necessary to get adoption started.

Instead of trying to deploy every feature supported by the SharePoint platform, consider limiting the initial rollout. Find a few well-chosen features and a set of motivated end users to target the first release to. You may call this a “pilot project” or just “version 1.” The important thing is to start small enough that success can be achieved and measured but big enough for success to be important to the users.

Below is an example of a plan for rolling out a typical portal environment for a large organization. In this case, publishing information to the entire organization is the primary goal. Collaboration features and business intelligence come into play later in the portal's lifecycle.

Phase 1: Publishing Focus

• Branding and Navigation: Establish the user interface.
• Metadata Definition: Create an information architecture.
• Search: Provide a convenient means of finding information throughout the organization.
• Publishing: Create workflows for approving and publishing content.
• Audience Targeting: Drive relevant data directly to the users that need it.
• Enterprise and Divisional Portals: Create content valuable to the entire organization.
• Support for Departmental Portals: Empower new parts of the organization to contribute on their own terms.

Phase 2: Collaboration Focus

• Team Sites: Allow users to contribute and collaborate on content.
• Site Provisioning: Provide users the ability to create their own collaboration areas without going through IT.
• My Sites: Give users a personal workspace to create and share information.
• Online Presence: Help users connect with one another more proactively. Make the portal a normal part of their daily routine.
• Social Media Features: Provide users with familiar tools for providing feedback and organizing content.

Phase 3: Business Process Improvement Focus

• Sandboxed Applications: Allow non-IT departments to create custom solutions for the portal.
• Business Process Automation: Leverage forms and workflows to automate custom business processes.
• Records Management: Manage documents for compliance and e-Discovery.
• Business Intelligence Dashboards: Allow users to perform interactive analysis using data from throughout the enterprise.

Rolling out manageable functionality incrementally will help users become comfortable with the solution at their own pace. Go for the quick win by identifying and targeting your organization's killer app.

Leverage Existing Data

As we can attest, nothing is scarier than a blank page. When a SharePoint portal is initially installed it is just an empty vessel waiting to be filled with content. At that moment, it provides very little, if any, value to the organization. Consider ways to maximize the value of the portal by loading up the content your company already has.

Any organization consisting of more than one person has collaborative data. It may be in e-mails, file shares, web sites, or some other type of information sharing system like Lotus Notes or a previous version of SharePoint. Loading this data into your new environment brings immediate value and relevance to both the portal and the data. The goal is to begin diverting the flow of information through the portal instead of less productive systems.

For example, e-mails tend to proliferate inconsistent copies of documents across the organization and conversations carried out via e-mail tend to vanish as soon as the conversation is over. By storing documents in SharePoint and sending links via e-mail, a central repository is created that helps manage versions and create consistency. Collaborative conversation spaces such as document and meeting workspaces, wikis, blogs, and discussion groups enable users to carry on these conversations in a more functional and durable manner.

When considering the migration of existing data, you need to consider how users find, create, and update that data. SharePoint's search functionality is a natural fit for finding data, but which data should be loaded? How should it be updated?

Here are some tips for using data migration to drive your adoption strategy:

• Evaluate each source system separately. The data migration tools available will vary as will the organization's need to find and update the data.
• Clean source data before loading it into SharePoint. This involves reorganizing data, removing duplicate data, creating metadata, and assessing relevance and size. There will never be a better time to not load data.
• SharePoint Enterprise Search has the ability to index information from many sources in many formats. These documents can be made available in search results without being physically moved into SharePoint.
• Consider migrating only the most recently updated content into SharePoint. Older data can still be accessed through the search feature until it is no longer needed.
• Once data is migrated into SharePoint, the old system should either be decommissioned or set into a read-only mode. Ensure that all new content is created in SharePoint, not the old system. Otherwise, the old system will never be able to go away.

By helping users find all of their data and making new and updated content easy to access, SharePoint can become the focus of the users' routine. Find ways to encourage new content to be created only in SharePoint.

Provide Incentives and Recognition

A good way to create engagement is by providing positive incentives for using the system. The details depend on the corporate culture of your business. Do your users respond to tangible or intangible benefits? Is public recognition highly valued? Do people respond more to prizes or a pat on the back?

There are many ways to provide incentives through SharePoint. The possibilities are limited only by your creativity. To target many different types of users, consider mixing and matching these types of initiatives. This should be a continuous project to help re-engage users on a continual basis.

The following sections look at some suggestions or programs to try. You can also look on open source sites such as CodePlex and SourceForge for pre-built components for these and other programs.

The Scavenger Hunt

Create a scavenger hunt where users are challenged to answer a series of questions based on the information available in the portal. These questions should make the user explore the site and try out features such as navigation, search, My Sites, and social computing. Give a prize for the individual or team that submits the most correct answers in a given time period or the first to answer all questions. These types of programs are often coordinated by Human Resources or a social committee within the organization. Try to leverage these existing groups whenever possible.

Most Popular Content (by Rating)

Use SharePoint 2010's content rating features to have users rate the content throughout the portal. On the portal's home page, create a web part that displays the highest rated content on the site. Be sure to prominently include the name of the contributor for each piece of content. This provides a listing of the site's most valuable content and recognition for the contents creators.

Most Popular Content (by Usage)

Create a listing similar to the one described above based on the usage data collected by SharePoint. This will show users where other users are frequently going to find information even if they have not explicitly rated it.

Most Active Team Sites

Again, use usage data to create a listing of the most active team sites in the portal. This will give those teams recognition for leveraging the power of SharePoint's collaboration tools.

Most Active Contributor

Create a listing of the users that have made the greatest number of new or updated content submissions. These are your true power users and they are your most valuable resource. Be sure to recognize them and cultivate their enthusiasm.

Most Active Social Tagger

SharePoint's social tagging feature allows users to add freeform metadata to content items. This information can be leveraged by other users as well. Recognize those users that contribute this type of content enhancement.

Weekly “Kudos” Recognition

Give users an easy way to nominate their coworkers for a kudos award or a pat on the back. List these prominently on the site's home page so that everyone knows what a star they are. These kudos are not necessarily for anything having to do with the portal. It is just for anything someone does to help someone else get their job done.

Best Practices Recognition

Recognize innovative end users for coming up with new ways to use the portal. The governance team can collect these ideas from IT, end users, or anywhere else feedback is collected. Those ideas that can be of use to everyone should be promoted and encouraged.

Success Stories or “Wins”

Similar to best practices, success stories describe how users are benefiting from the use of the portal. Communicating these stories provides encouragement and recognition across the organization.

Rolling Display of Incentive Programs

All of the above ideas can be used together without overloading the portal's home page by creating a Web Part that displays one or two of these results at a time. Each time the home page is hit, or perhaps on a timer, a different recognition program's results can be presented.