Hi Guise my name is Adam shun, I read your Article, it give us very nice infomation and from here We can know country economy condition. ...
1 minute ago by Boucherh on Introducing Linux virtual containers with LXC
We have relaunched: What's new at ZDNet Asia?
ZDNet / Insight / Business
Focus on user acceptance to ensure a successful rollout
Summary
A poorly planned end-user rollout of a new application or version upgrade can bring a project manager a heap of trouble. Follow these seven points to make sure your project launch is successful.
Events
Microsoft MSDN/Developer Event
25 Mar 2010
One Marina Boulevard, Microsoft Singapore
IT Architect Regional Conference Singapore 2010
20 - 21 Apr 2010
Singapore Management University, Singapore
The Internet Show 2010
21-22 Apr 2010
Suntec Singapore
Last-minute quality assurance headaches are nothing
compared to the grief you’ll buy yourself with a poorly planned end-user rollout
of a new application or version upgrade. My own deepest migration scars come
from the frustration of seeing a new product not being used to its full
potential—in business parlance, I believe that’s called non-actualized ROI. And
in almost all cases, I’ve been able to trace these shortcomings back to a few
miscues on the personnel side of the launch. In this article, I’ll share seven
tips that will help you avoid these personnel missteps.
A success, despite it all
To jog my buried and painful memories a bit, I asked some of my old colleagues at TechRepublic about their impressions of the rollout for the company’s custom-built content management system, which I helped spearhead a few years ago. The CMS—best described as a Web-based workflow and data-capture application—encapsulates the work of about 30 TechRepublic employees, and we knew going in that it fit at least one functional definition of “enterprise software”—it changed the way we did business.
All in all, I’d have to say the rollout was a success—the system is still in use today—but it was not painless. Some groups of employees felt that it was overly restrictive and that it infringed on their autonomy, which of course it was designed to do, at least to some extent. Others found our documentation to be a little shoddy, which I suppose it was to some degree. Still others just wanted to complain about seemingly minor details, a tendency that is, after all, human nature, and I’m certain in some cases quite justified.
At any rate, here are the main tips that came up during my review of the rollout process. The recurring theme here is that if users don’t take advantage of the new benefits that drove the decision to upgrade, you’ve basically wasted a lot of your time.
Oddly enough, my recollection synchs fairly closely with the feedback I got from users who were on the business end of the rollout, for better or for worse.
1. Fully budget training expenses as part of the rollout
My biggest mistake, unquestionably, was not locking in a budget for CMS training. Since it was a highly customized system, we figured we could just handle the bulk of the training ourselves, and the few resources we did have allocated were gobbled up by swelling development costs. If you have a corporate training department behind you, work with that director closely to make sure you have a full program mapped out. If you’re in a smaller shop, outsource some aspect of the training, if at all possible.
2. Identify beta user groups
This was a big winner for us. Before migrating or rolling out a new app, identify about 10 percent of the affected user base and let them start playing with the toolset a few weeks before launch. This will let you tweak some technology, but far more importantly, it will help you identify sore spots from the users’ perspective for which you can prepare.
3. Identify power users to help with post-launch support
This is a natural outgrowth of tip 2, but I can’t repeat it too often. We were able to identify one or two power users from each of the workgroup roles identified with the CMS. Relying on those users to answer the same question for the 500th time was a real lifesaver for the core rollout team.
A success, despite it all
To jog my buried and painful memories a bit, I asked some of my old colleagues at TechRepublic about their impressions of the rollout for the company’s custom-built content management system, which I helped spearhead a few years ago. The CMS—best described as a Web-based workflow and data-capture application—encapsulates the work of about 30 TechRepublic employees, and we knew going in that it fit at least one functional definition of “enterprise software”—it changed the way we did business.
All in all, I’d have to say the rollout was a success—the system is still in use today—but it was not painless. Some groups of employees felt that it was overly restrictive and that it infringed on their autonomy, which of course it was designed to do, at least to some extent. Others found our documentation to be a little shoddy, which I suppose it was to some degree. Still others just wanted to complain about seemingly minor details, a tendency that is, after all, human nature, and I’m certain in some cases quite justified.
At any rate, here are the main tips that came up during my review of the rollout process. The recurring theme here is that if users don’t take advantage of the new benefits that drove the decision to upgrade, you’ve basically wasted a lot of your time.
Oddly enough, my recollection synchs fairly closely with the feedback I got from users who were on the business end of the rollout, for better or for worse.
1. Fully budget training expenses as part of the rollout
My biggest mistake, unquestionably, was not locking in a budget for CMS training. Since it was a highly customized system, we figured we could just handle the bulk of the training ourselves, and the few resources we did have allocated were gobbled up by swelling development costs. If you have a corporate training department behind you, work with that director closely to make sure you have a full program mapped out. If you’re in a smaller shop, outsource some aspect of the training, if at all possible.
2. Identify beta user groups
This was a big winner for us. Before migrating or rolling out a new app, identify about 10 percent of the affected user base and let them start playing with the toolset a few weeks before launch. This will let you tweak some technology, but far more importantly, it will help you identify sore spots from the users’ perspective for which you can prepare.
3. Identify power users to help with post-launch support
This is a natural outgrowth of tip 2, but I can’t repeat it too often. We were able to identify one or two power users from each of the workgroup roles identified with the CMS. Relying on those users to answer the same question for the 500th time was a real lifesaver for the core rollout team.
Transform your business interactions with real-time voice, video and telepresence solutions.
Tech Vendor: Cisco
Tech Vendor: Cisco
ZDNet Asia Live
Hi Guise my name is Adam shun, I read your Article, it give us very nice infomation and from here We can know country economy condition. ...
2 minutes ago by Boucherh on Report: Memory card exposed 3,000 phones to virusReasons to care about Viacom v. Google - Zd Net Asia.com: Last Thursday's 200-page dump of cour... http://bit.ly/crqRzF #SME #UMG #WMG #EMI
4 hours 52 minutes ago by metaphysicalist on topsy@BarackObama People voted you in for change. Why are you not listening on ACTA http://tinyurl.com/y8u56g9 #hcr HCR
6 hours 3 minutes ago by studio1411 on topsyMB Kabbalah IChing - Free Software Downloads - ZDNet Asia: MB Kabbalah IChing is a zodiac sign based software that... http://bit.ly/czUQRr
6 hours 56 minutes ago by fighting_jew on topsyFound this great little deal calculator http://www.zdnetasia.com/downloa...
14 hours 17 minutes ago by winstoncranford on topsy
Read my blog post on getting the most from your Nexus One: http://www.zdnetasia.com/blogs/m...
20 hours 34 minutes ago by mistertechblog on twitter
RT @3wconsulting: Whitepaper from http://3W.com.au "Outsourcing Your IT Requirements to Philippines" now on @zdnetaustralia & @zdnetasia http://ow.ly/1oY9f
1 day 48 minutes ago by LeesaAT3W on twitter
Whitepaper from http://3W.com.au "Outsourcing Your IT Requirements to Philippines" now on @zdnetaustralia & @zdnetasia http://ow.ly/1oYbA
1 day 49 minutes ago by itemployment on twitter
Whitepaper from http://3W.com.au "Outsourcing Your IT Requirements to Philippines" now on @zdnetaustralia & @zdnetasia http://ow.ly/1oYbz
1 day 49 minutes ago by brucemills on twitter
Zdnetasia.com Estimated Worth $178,365 USD. Daily Ad Revenue:$244 USD, Daily Views:81,445 Pages... - http://www.haplog.com/www.zdneta...
1 day 32 minutes ago by Haplog on twitterThe receivers don't transmit back to the satellite. Unless there is a phone line attached to the receiver, they don't have any wa...
2 days 15 minutes ago by bessellbrowne on Apple to join the geolocation craze?whatever little understanding I have we 'll only progress toward end of the world if we use HPCs to lenthen life of human being. Huma...
2 days 21 minutes ago by abhi32002@gmail.com on High computing promises elixir of lifeThanks for the knowledgeable article on SDDs. Allas...when all this reasearch will happen in Indian Universities. Hope the new bill on Fo...
2 days 34 minutes ago by abhi32002@gmail.com on APAC HPC users eye solid-state drivesIt was a good article. This brings a good opportunity for Indian IT firms to come up with new solutions in this field. HPC can become a b...
2 days 53 minutes ago by abhi32002@gmail.com on High computing most-wanted job in AsiaCOL KR DHARMADHIKARY(RETD) its very late to reply the link, but if it is still alive and looking for opportunity, i would like to know th...
2 days 50 minutes ago by deb021280 on Education takes off in rural India, helped by PCs
High performance computing (HPC) most-wanted job in Asia http://bit.ly/9vFC3i (via @zdnetasia) #singapore
2 days 7 minutes ago by mySingapore on twitter
RT @zdnetasia: EMC COO, Pat Gelsinger, on bridging gaps in the organization and its cloud ambitions in Asia. (cont) http://tl.gd/i5jjd
2 days 55 minutes ago by mistymaitimoe on twitter
EMC COO, Pat Gelsinger, on bridging gaps in the organization and its cloud ambitions in Asia. http://bit.ly/9etOZW
2 days 59 minutes ago by zdnetasia on twitter
Asian SMBs need to pay more attention to disaster recovery planning http://bit.ly/bDet08 via @zdnetasia
2 days 15 minutes ago by asiapacsolution on twitterAsian SMBs need to pay more attention to disaster recovery planning http://bit.ly/bDet08
2 days 30 minutes ago by zdnetasia on twitter"YOG should have social media rules, too - Internet - News" http://bit.ly/dn6vjD
2 days 37 minutes ago by socialsentiment on topsy
[TECH] URL Shorteners slow Web redirection. - http://bit.ly/bySnWK @zdnetasia
3 days 13 minutes ago by danielcktan on twitter
URL shorteners are great but they can slow web redirection & you pray it would never go down http://bit.ly/bySnWK via @zdnetasia
3 days 41 minutes ago by angahsin on twitterURL shorteners slow Web redirection. http://bit.ly/bySnWK
3 days 10 minutes ago by zdnetasia on twitterChinese agencies cry foul over Google. http://bit.ly/by6rwV
3 days 16 minutes ago by zdnetasia on twitterall of sg's isps have been practising compulsory invisible proxy for all home subscribers at their backend since many years back alre...
4 days 34 minutes ago by melvinchia on Web filters mean bad news for businessit is not to good for china.
Proactol
Very good explanation of JMX
5 days 24 minutes ago by Babith B on Managing applications with JMXThe reaction to a report issued Tuesday by Flurry Analytics managed to completely overlook some interesting news--the Android-based Motorola Droid outsold the original iPhone over the same period of time following their respective launches--to focus instead on the sales numbers for the Nexus One.
5 days 27 minutes ago by lonemavericks on diggsAnother ZTE story....
5 days 29 minutes ago by Moderate Your Greed on Philippines opens bid for final 3G licenseWe at www.fifosys.com have also seen a growth in IT outsourcing and anticipate it as a growing field.
5 days 2 minutes ago by sarah Jane on Companies' outsourcing spend to increaseI agree with you. The iSiVaL is super portable and TVs can't expand their image size. I recorded a video that might bring some ideas to...
5 days 33 minutes ago by Jesse B Andersen on Buying a projector? Try an LED TV insteadhermm... he deserved it.. he shud not talk abt sensitive things like tat, well, he shud think twice before saying all those things, event...
5 days 11 minutes ago by ... on Facebook user charged in MalaysiaPassword manager tools are potential security threat. Criminals who hack into the computer can use the password manager to log onto any s...
6 days 11 minutes ago by ohanae on What defaults should random password generators use?Keep up with ZDNet Asia
Linkedin 
RSS Feeds 
Newsletters 
Twitter Inside ZDNet Asia
Sponsored
The Desktop Virtualization Revolution is here!
Find our more with Citrix Simplicity is Power
2010 IT Salary & Skills Report
Find out the salary range of IT professionals. Join activeTechPros for free access to the report.
The Internet Show 2010, 21-22 Apr 2010, Singapore
FREE admission for visitors who pre-register online. Register Today!
