Author: Michael Sampson

It’s been a while since I’ve written for EndUserSharePoint. Since late January I have published a number of reports, and my new book on User Adoption Strategies is just out. In this post, I want to tell you about one of the new reports.

First, the background. Governance is a key focus in my book, SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration, but at a level above the optimization of technical settings. In my world, governance is about group decisions on how to make great use of the technology of SharePoint towards the fulfilment of business objectives. As a follow-on to SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration, I am writing a series of reports that explore particular governance themes when using SharePoint for collaboration. The first was Site Creation Rights, the second is User Adoption Strategies, and I’m currently working on the third (Site Closure Policy – more to come!).

The User Adoption Strategies report looks at the strategies that organizations are using to encourage adoption of SharePoint, and goes beyond mere “use” and explores the strategies that are “most effective.” The findings come from a survey I ran between January and March 2010, to which 180-something people using SharePoint responded. I was really pleased with the number of respondents … and if you were one of them, my thanks.

Here’s the key finding: The most commonly used user adoption strategies are not the most effective. This is startling, because you or your company may be spending money on ineffective adoption strategies. Or you may be spending all of your money on the ineffective strategies, and not getting to the more effective ones.

The most commonly used strategies are Pages on the Intranet (the user goes and reads), Classroom Training (with a group of users), and Web-based Training (online training materials, or Live Webinars). Although Pages on the Intranet is the most commonly used strategy, it was ranked by respondents as the least effective! Classroom Training and Web-based Training did better on the effectiveness scale, but were still on the lower end of ranking.

What was the most effective strategy? By a clear margin, spending time in one-to-one coaching, or as it was called in the survey, “Over-the-Shoulder Watching”. Second place went to real-to-life scenarios (painting a picture of how SharePoint could be helpful within a particular work context, much like my book Seamless Teamwork does for team projects). Third place went to executive sponsorship and support.

Part of the trick with user adoption is to work from the principle that adoption is a process, not an event. Thus you can’t just implement one strategy and hope for the best; there is an interplay between the strategies that you need to follow. Here’s an example of how one survey respondent approached the user adoption challenge at their company – picking up on this interplay:

“After a series of instructor led classes on how a team could use SharePoint to organize their information and communicate with team members, most participants seemed mildly interested and a few went on to establish a team site (from a standardized template). Of those, a few have grown more interested and asked for one-on-one coaching and training. Those who received the special attention REALLY got it and you could see the light bulbs going off in their head. This has lead to teams taking a fresh new approach to the information they generate and maintain and there is a palpable amount of energy and interest behind this. I am hopeful that this will be contagious and that these early and enthusiastic adopters will become exemplars. So a broad based blanket approach of the basic topics to everyone, followed by more intense and personal coaching on a select few teams has been our approach. I am hopeful that the user base will become stronger and the movement will become more grass roots.”“

The report gives data on the strategies that SharePoint organizations are using for user adoption, and then dives into an analysis of which strategies are most effective for user adoption. There are also two sections which analyze the comments from respondents about the six strategies that worked well for user adoption, and the four key recommendations from respondents about what they would do differently if starting again on the user adoption journey.

If this report could help your governance team in their work, please check out the free Summary document or order the Group License of the report.

Author: Michael Sampson

Michael Sampson is a Collaboration Strategist. He helps end-user organizations in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Europe and other places around the world improve the performance of distributed teams. Michael is the author of Seamless Teamwork: Using Microsoft SharePoint Technologies to Collaborate, Innovate, and Drive Business in New Ways (Microsoft Press, 2009), and SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration: Using SharePoint to Enhance Business Collaboration (2009). Based in New Zealand, Michael works with clients worldwide.