Planning the Transition to Adoption

The project promised to show positive productivity gains; yet even after extending both schedule and cost, once the solution was finally released, overall productivity actually dropped.  What happened? 

Enterprise system implementations can be large, fast-moving, tricky things with lots of stakeholder expectations and moving parts to manage  They tend to burn hotter, using more resources and garnering more attention, just prior to product release.  Bringing home the project to meet an integrated master schedule deadline is often the highest business priority, sometimes even at the risk of sacrificing scope and reducing product quality.

Once the project team completes their implementation and the system is released, unless pre-planned product improvements are in play, the core delivery team usually moves to the next assignment or project.  The operations team takes over product maintenance and support, the help desk fields questions, the accounts team creates user role access, and the systems team manages the data stores.  All seems well, except that productivity didn’t skyrocket on release day.

Too often the integrated product team is focused on the final system delivery as the finish line of their efforts; too few times do they consider the final system delivery as the starting line for the users.  

Simply releasing a product into the environment doesn’t guarantee its viability, or its ability to enhance corporate productivity, or its success and adoption.  Since only user acceptance and adoption accomplish the full realization of product value, a key planning element for the product team includes traversing the transition period between product introduction and full user adoption.  

THREE WAVES THROUGH TRANSITION

The typical technology adoption cycle occurs as a bell curve; to survive “the chasm”, the make-or-break point in the adoption process where an application is either accepted or fails*, requires planning and providing multiple waves of support.  Environmental changes also introduce a typical productivity J-curve, indicating some short-term loss of productivity as the new product or process change is absorbed into daily work patterns.  

Launch goals include shortening the overall adoption cycle as well as minimizing the depth and duration of the productivity loss.  A coordinated and communicated series of support waves achieves both goals by delivering a sequence of user-focused activities mirroring the early adoption, majority peak, and laggard phases of adoption.

Every enterprise implementation is different: adoption durations vary and productivity curves may rise faster or dwell longer below start levels, but all follow the same adoption and productivity cycles.  The key to a successful system roll-out lies in effective and frequent communications prior to launch, and a well-managed transition support plan throughout adoption.

*Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers, Collins Business Essentials, 2014; www.geoffreyamoore.com