Hi Everyone,

A new year traditionally starts with a list of things to do. Honestly most of the items are forgotten by February/March but the intentions are good.

So I thought I would instead provide a list of “attention points” as you start your Digital Workplace journey.

I will provide some information and indicators. If you encounter these then you might want to address the point above.

• Don’t define it as an IT project.
  • As described in the Phoenix project : there are 4 types of work. This one clearly needs to be defined as a business project and nothing else.
  • Indicators : The sponsor is part of ICT. Nobody in the business has heard of your project. Only ICT related profiles show up at the governance meetings.
    

• Remember Operations
  • The introduction of new components is always pure fun for consultants but every now and then they forget that they will leave at a certain point in time and that operations will need to take over. Invest in knowledge transfer and have a proces that involves operations at the right time to avoid surprises.
  • Indicators : Operations teams creating tickets about changes when you’re halfway into production. Lack of operational procedures or knowledge base articles as part of the project delivery.
    

• Have a roadmap.
  • As it is a business project you will require a plan to move ahead with your program. Invest time in the creation of this plan so there is alignment on the priorities in which components will be set up.
  • Indicators : Priorities shift constantly. There is no clear awareness of dependencies between components. There is no or there are several “roadmaps” defined with different priorities.

• Review your onboarding process.
  • Chances are that you will be rolling out quite some changes on your users , you’ll add licensing , applications etc. If you don’t want to be stuck in an eternal catch up action you’ll need to modify the on- and offboarding process.
  • Indicators : Outdated or no documentation of any kind of onboarding process.
    

• Know the culture.
  • Culture defines how people behave, communicate and react. Having a culture is proper to society and of course places of work. You’ll need to known the culture in order to know how it will have an impact on your change and communication steps. If you are unaware of the culture it will slow your work down.
  • Indicators : You’re presenting a fancy ( Design Idea ! ) powerpoint in English concerning a business question when participants ask where the French version in the Corporate Template is. Setting up a remote meeting when all other participants are in the same location in the Office : )

• Don’t forget about the change.
  • There are 2 aspects to change. The first one is about the people, during the project there will be changes required in how people do stuff. By nature people are reluctant to change so setup the required teams to perform change management and user adoption, a crucial aspect of the Digital workplace program.
  • Indicators : No change management component foreseen in any project. We have change management as we do a knowledge handover right ?
  • The second aspect is more technical , a digital workplace mostly ( ~always ) involves the introduction of cloud components. By definition using cloud means that you will be entering a highly volatile environment with lots of changes coming your way fast. Make sure you have release and change management processes defined so you are able to deal with this.
  • Indicators : Outdated or no documentation of any kind of release or change procedures.

There it is , hope it helps.