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A Method of Measuring Performance of an Adoption Plan is also an Essential Component of the Plan Itself

For readers generally unfamiliar with IT project planning, it may seem curious to learn the role played by a method of measuring performance of the plan, itself. Performance measurement is actually a core component of the plan itself. Cyrielle Simeone, a Product Manager at Microsoft and Dux Raymond Sy include “Measure and Grow” as the last of four pillars of a plan to build, support, and sustain user adoption of computing on a SharePoint Online, Office 365 computing platform.

This plan architecture is included in a webcast titled Beyond Deployment: How IT Can Inspire, Motivate, and Drive Sustainable Adoption. The other three pillars of this adoption plan are titled:

  1. Listen & Plan
  2. Envision & Design
  3. Drive & Engage

The slogan or tagline for pillar 4, “Measure and Grow”, sums up the rationale for including these procedures as core components of the plan itself: “A benchmark, KPIs and success stories to help demonstrate success internally, improve and expand” (quoted from one of the slides accompanying the above mentioned audio webcast recorded at TechEd North America, 2014). So, it may be safe to say an adoption plan without a method of measuring actual plan performance against intended objectives is, in fact, not a plan at all.

This fourth plan pillar is of particular importance to our own VisualSP Help System. The Enterprise Edition of this product (which is currently only available for SharePoint 2010 or 2013, on premises) empowers users to collect statistics on how our Help System is being consumed by SharePoint users. So we fully subscribe to the same notion of how an optimized implementation plan for our product should take shape.

If plan performance has not been measured, how else might stakeholders demonstrate success, or failure, or something in between? In fact there is no way to demonstrate plan performance without measurement. We think our readers should look at any other method purporting to deliver the same benefit as unrealistic and with limited, if any value. What makes sense for the Office 365 Adoption Plan presented in the TechEd North America, 2014 webcast, makes sense for our product, as well. The good news is VisualSP is, we think, a high value feature of any Office 365, or SharePoint on premises adoption plan, as well.

Ira Michael Blonder

©Rehmani Consulting, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder 2014 All Rights Reserved