Open Office365 Adoption, what is it? First, it’s the synergy of two strong competencies within Smartview: its Microsoft branch and its agility/change management branch. It’s also the culmination of two intersecting observations: successfully deploying such a solution is not easy, successfully executing organizational transformations in companies is not easy. QED: Successfully executing a transformation around a solution like Office365 is not easy. Open Office365 Adoption is therefore the convergence of our observations, of our experiences around our professions to better meet our clients’ expectations.

We were able to make a first official presentation of this approach on December 12, 2014, in Geneva, at the invitation of Yoan Topenot. For me it was a first, a sort of ethnological safari in the tribe of Microsoft MVPs that I had until then only encountered through my partner Gilles Pommier (this might be the subject of a future article). I’m not going to tell you about that morning, Renaud Comte provided feedback here, and I’m sharing the slides below. Instead, I’ll present our approach and our offering.

Our observations

Adopting Office365 is not easy. Gilles observes that too frequently people don’t devote enough time to it. Classic syndrome: it’s important but we don’t have time to dedicate to it. Simple solution: don’t do it! Oh but it’s important!! Oh but then I don’t understand: it’s important but you don’t have time to dedicate to it. We’re back to square one: if it’s important, you need time.

This lack of focus, though crucial, is accentuated by all sorts of beliefs associated with Office365, which has many qualities (and flaws), but not necessarily the ones you think. And in particular, it’s essential to devote time to it, I insist, it’s not magic. This often reminds me of the response I get when people ask me about SAP and agility, about the integrated, global, ready-made, all-in-one aspect of SAP: “therefore that doesn’t lend itself to agility, sir.” My opinion is quite the opposite. Generally I answer this question with another question: if everything is integrated, all-in-one, global, ready-made, you have strictly no SAP consultants accompanying you otherwise I don’t understand anymore. I’ll let you imagine the answer.

Another point: governance is very often missing. Here again as usual people want a tool, a “how,” before questioning the “why,” the value, the vision. And without desired value, without vision, it’s normal that governance is dismissed.

Last point that Gilles, my partner, reminds me of, as always for the technical aspects, to save precious time, to avoid known and recurring pitfalls, you need experts. Surrounding yourself with the right expert at the right time (not too late) will cost you more at time T but will save you much more in the medium term.

To these main adoption challenges around Office365 are added the classic difficulties related to organizational change management in companies. The observation is not great—for 30 years the numbers haven’t changed, roughly speaking, 70% of organizational changes fail. I did say 70%.

Our approach

Thus, these transformations mix emergence issues (this is the complex domain) with expertise issues (this is the complicated domain). Complex and complicated—the responses are very different: experts on one side, time, emergence and interaction on the other (to dig deeper: cynefin and its lego game). These transformations therefore need two aspects: technical and business expertise to save time, money, knowledge, precision; an emergent approach to best adapt to the context: target, vision, adaptation to people and resources, responses to issues, etc.

Regarding the emergent part, we propose using the latest change management approaches to succeed in enterprise adoption of a solution like Office365, which we “equip” with the right experts. The latest change management approaches? Having used it and having had a front-row seat when receiving Dan Mezick in 2013, I’m a proud supporter of Open Agile Adoption. That’s why we call our approach Open Office365 Adoption. We belong to the Prime OS group launched by Dan Mezick, and we regularly conduct Open Agile Adoptions. It’s a technology I greatly appreciate that remains recent and unfortunately still little known—to learn more: stories of open agile adoption. To this I associate ingredients from the very close Changeboxing by Claude Emond.

Overall, you must ensure the vision and management support, without which change will be very difficult. You must ensure the desire for change and a capacity for self-organization as Claude Emond says. This is an essential alignment phase (which can take the form of interviews, seminars and/or training). If this is conclusive, you can define target groups or operate purely by invitation (as in Open Agile Adoption).

To fully understand Open Agile Adoption, I refer you to: stories of open agile adoption. But I’ll return to several key points:

• Once again you need the support of the top leaders (and therefore their presence at key moments of the cycle: openspace or changeboxing day). They will define the constraints and vision, and guarantee their support. Nothing worse than going back on this, lost trust is difficult to recover.
• The principle of invitation, and therefore non-constraint, is essential: to see clearly the current state, to enable stakeholder involvement, to promote the benefits of context adaptation, etc.
• The cycle approach and the possible questioning of actions from one cycle to another is essential to attenuate the natural resistance to change, or not to lock in too early on an inadequate solution.
• The transformation is driven and adapted by its stakeholders. The drivers of brainstorming sessions that occur during the openspace day are often invited to become the champions of the subject during the cycle. But there is no obligation to this.
• We will distill into the frameworks proposed by Open Agile Adoption a set of technological or functional best practices carried by our experts (see below) that will allow the openspace brainstorming sessions to start from sound bases, while never being prescriptive. This is drawn for example from Changeboxing by Claude Emond and blends very well with Dan Mezick’s Open Agile Adoption (here the changeboxing cheatsheet).
• We consolidate the results and proposals from each cycle start: everyone knows they can implement them in the interval, and that a new cycle will be triggered (in 2 months, in 3 months, the duration is to be defined according to context). Often we track progress using a Kanban Portfolio.
• Accompaniment, expertise and coaching, amplification of storytelling by management, will enable change and its anchoring in the company. These actions take place between cycles according to a rhythm that depends on the context.

Our offering

Our offering, the Smartview offering, and I’m very pleased because this is the first time we’ve combined our diverse and varied competencies so well, is therefore to offer you three profiles that cover all these aspects to succeed in your Office365 adoptions.

• Gilles Pommier, as technical expert in Microsoft solutions and particularly MVP Office365, leads the alignment, clarification, support actions in the cycle, and in the Open Agile Adoption days.
• Mylène Dumon, as expert in functional aspects around Microsoft solutions, also leads alignment, clarification, support actions in the cycle, and in the Open Agile Adoption days.
• And myself, Pablo Pernot, I lead the change management and project management approaches.

Below you will find the slides from the December 12 presentation in Geneva, as well as a short film to propose our session throughout the world—sensitive souls should refrain.

The video for non-sensitive souls.

The presentation: