Everyone wants the new thing, but no one wants to change. The benefits of the change will outweigh the pain of changing, but that does not mean the experience will not be painful. I am working with two clients that, on the surface, are very similar in size, scale, and industry, but their cultures and approaches to transformations are very different.
The Great Debate: Big-Bang vs. Phased Rollouts
In most of my projects, given their unique situations, we must determine which approach is the best fit. Some clients may be unable to use a big-bang approach because of enterprise environmental factors (a PMP way of saying the setup of the company and the way they work). These can include related technologies that cannot respond or scale with the change effort, departments or teams that cannot weather the disruption because of contractual or reporting needs, and migration processes that would take out large portions of their business for too long a period.
Big-Bang Approach: Imagine stepping out of the office on Friday evening with the familiar hum of the old systems still in your ears. A brand-new digital landscape awaits you this Monday morning—a collective leap into the new bonds teams in a shared experience. Everyone dives into fresh environments together and can help each other.
Benefits:
- Unity in Transition: The entire organization moves together, creating a shared understanding and unified approach to problem-solving. I just went through this with a global company, and it was great to see people all over the organization helping each other and sharing their experiences.
- Immediate Benefits: Organizations can realize quick productivity boosts and feature utilization if successful. It will limit the disruption to a short timeframe, and everyone will be in the new system, resuming business as usual (whatever that is :-).
Challenges:
- Intense Learning Curve: Employees might feel overwhelmed with every new feature introduced simultaneously. The pressure can be seen through escalated support tickets and entire departments opening help requests.
- Risk: If something goes wrong, it affects the entire organization. If a "show stopper" issue arises, it can create a concern in confidence for the project.
- Out-of-Band Communications: When a big bang is underway, the traditional processes are generally unavailable. Users will need a way to communicate. It is important to pre-plan your graphics and messages for several scenarios; that way,, youu can quickly keep people informe when the unexpected happensd. In my work, we often work with people's email and chat systems, so we must create communication communities to reach users. If your effort isn't impacting these systems, creating a site/team/channel is still recommended to preserve the status messages in all the migration noise.
Phased Approach: In this journey, each step is calculated, introducing changes in manageable doses. It's a more meticulous, planned transition, allowing feedback to shape subsequent phases.
Benefits:
- Feedback Loops: Early adopters can provide invaluable feedback, refining the rollout for subsequent teams. This means you have set up systems and processes to address each rollout wave. I need to mention timing here. Too often, I have to push back on project teams that schedule wave 2 to come right after wave 1. This leaves no time for people to feel the change, provide feedback, and determine what actions or edits are needed before Wave 2 joins the effort. The amount of delay between waves is strongly correlated to the speed of the project team; if they ARE quick to turn changes around, you can use a one-week buffer, but if the project team has historically taken multiple weeks to adjust to a change, then a one week buffer will not be sufficient to incorporate any changes from the feedback.
- Mitigated Risks: Any issues can be isolated and managed without widespread disruption. This can make the people in Wave 1 feel like they got a sub-standard experience when talking to their colleagues in Wave 5. This is when having a behavioral understanding of your users (where they are on the diffusion of innovation curve) can help.
Challenges:
- Prolonged Adjustment: Teams might operate under mixed systems for extended periods, which can sometimes create confusion. It is vital to make sure you map and understand how teams interact in the ordinary course of business. You may find groups so tightly related that they should be in the same wave.
- It can be more resource-intensive, requiring multiple training sessions or support mechanisms.
Both approaches face the Transfer Problem.
It does not matter which approach you choose. Users must know what changes and how to work in the new environments. Training is the unsung hero of any digital transformation. But a tricky challenge lurks in the shadows: the Transfer Problem. It's one thing to understand a concept in a simulated environment and another to apply it in day-to-day tasks. I come across this all the time. Because users have been using Outlook for years, they feel there is nothing they need to learn. Then, when we move their mailbox to the cloud, enforce sensitivity labels, enable data retention rules, or a host of other changes, the need for Outlook training is evident.