User Adoption is a big deal. You can implement and customize SharePoint until your hearts content but if your users are scared of it, don’t like change or simply find it too hard to learn and find stuff, it will fail. This is often one of the hardest challenges there is.
I would love to hear what techniques you use specifically around these areas. Please use some (or all) of these questions to give inspiration :
- Did you get end-users involved in the design and implementation phases ?
- Did you train the users and if so, how ? (Videos, residential, train the trainer ?)
- If you were replacing something they used to have with SharePoint, how did you manage the change ?
- Do you measure on-going satisfaction ?
- What was your biggest challenge when implementing, what barriers did you over come ?
- Did you have a killer app, or business process that made it “all worth while ?”
- How do your users find out more information on how to do things, where’s the community ?
- During implementation, what areas did you spend lot’s of time on to get right ? (e.g Search, Info architecture, etc).
- What 3rd party apps did you buy to help you ?
If you know of a tool / resource, please add it here :Â http://list.ly/list/7fR-sharepoint-usability-tools
I believe the key with user adoption starts with informational/demo session(s). A lot of time users fall into 1 of 3 groups: 1) Lack of Knowledge of what SP can do, 2) Bad Experience w/SP, 3) Incorrectly Informed on what SP really does.
In an information session what I find extremely valuable is having a Demo site available with different implementations of features in SP. Now this may not meet every users needs however it gives them the opportunity to see what SP capacity and sparks ideas for a requirements session.
