Book it! Scheduling User Adoption activities is a must to ensure long-term IT success.

This article was originally published on Tri Tuns Blog.

OBSERVATION

We have all experienced this: a round of discussions generating wonderful ideas, with a promise to reconvene and determine next action items. The problem is those action items rarely become a reality, because there was never a sufficient amount of follow-through to act on those ideas.

We know that user adoption (UA) of IT systems does not occur without deliberate action items. Since the goal is to conduct specific activities that encourage end-users to engage your IT system as designed, we need to move from mere discussions and ideas to committed actions that promote user adoption.

In order to maintain both focus and follow-through of user adoption plans, it is recommended to reconstruct your project team meetings in a way that generates ideas and creates specific follow-up actions.

CONSIDER THIS

For each strategy phase of the user adoption (UA) plan (e.g. analysis, engagement, learning, support, etc.) create two separate meeting times and agendas:

1. “Brainstorming Session”
2. “Implementation Planning”

Brainstorming Session:

• Ascertain and list the relevant topics for that phase of the UA plan (rely not only on the project plan and initial team discussions but also on your UA consultant/expert).
• Organize each agenda topic in a logical sequence to create a seamless and singular focus throughout the session.
• Place specific time limits for each discussion topic, and be realistic as to what can be accomplished, as brainstorming/discussions can take longer than expected. Therefore do not attempt to overload the meeting agenda with too many topics. If needed, consider more than one brainstorming session vs. one long session.
• During the brainstorming session, ALWAYS include the predicted impacts to user adoption of each idea.
• Assign specific assignments to session participants with the due date set for the following meeting: “Implementation Planning”. Typically, these assignments are data gathering/research in nature, which shall help the team determine the implementation plan.

Implementation Planning:

• Revisit each discussion topic in the same sequence from the brainstorming session.
• Address the findings from the various assignments in order to decide how to best proceed. Again, validate each decision based on predicted impact to user adoption.
• Agree to a specific series of implementation activities to enact your team’s decisions. This must include primary ownership and enactors of activities, timeframes, resources required, leadership endorsement and support.

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

As you plan for your next UA meetings, remember what the overarching goal is: to enact specific actions that will create user adoption of your IT system. Using the above steps can help you and your team follow-through on your user adoption ideas to create long lasting results.

RELATED RESOURCES

Check out these other resources for more information related to this topic:

• Take the Tri Tuns User Adoption Challenge – a free online assessment tool
• Read: “Does Your User Adoption Methodology Remove Barriers To Adoption?”
• Read: “Design the right metrics to improve user adoption”