Too Much Too Soon: Incremental Release Of SharePoint Functionality

SharePoint Expert Blog

Nick Inglis

Community Topic(s): SharePoint

Keywords: sharepoint 2010, sharepoint, user adoption, functionality, incremental release

By Nick Inglis, SharePoint Program Manager at AIIM

November 17, 2011 - 2:56 PM

That's Not A Coffee Cup HolderI’ve had a lot of offhand conversation about user adoption of SharePoint lately and what I’ve found is that when companies give all of the functionality of SharePoint at launch they struggle more with user adoption (this is conjecture as I know of no full studies of this). The companies that I’ve talked to that have put together a functionality release schedule seem to be the ones that have an easier time with user adoption.

I think user adoption issue is primarily because SharePoint has the propensity to overwhelm new users. Since SharePoint can theoretically do anything, giving your users a baseline functionality and then building upon that gives them a chance to get to know the system a bit before they have the broad range of functionality.

One company that I’ve talked with treated their initial launch as a pre-release and allowed users to utilize the new system while the old system was still in place with limited functionality and their user adoption seemed to be the best. Allowing those who can champion your new system to self select and then incrementally bringing forward additional functionality seems to me to be a future best practice.

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Ruven Gotz

Hence my three rules of SharePoint...

Submitted by Ruven Gotz November 21, 2011 - 10:36 AM

1) Simplicity
2) Simplicity
3) Simplicity

Implementing SharePoint is not just about training users to use the new tool: There are often process and cultural changes involved as well. Too much, too soon will backfire.

AIIM Expert Blogger, Christian Buckly captured me saying this in his "One Thing about SharePoint" one-minute video: http://youtu.be/jquSduh0Nao
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Nick Inglis

Agreed

Submitted by Nick Inglis November 23, 2011 - 10:33 AM

I couldn't agree more. Making SharePoint simple can be a hard task, this is just one small aspect of a larger strategy that should exist.
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