There are three crucial components to be considered in order to ensure successful implementation of a new system in operations and it corresponding adoption by users.
- Back-end stability is key
- Front-end development is king
- User is queen
BACK-END STABILITY IS KEY
When delivering a new platform, don’t just look at the application itself, look at how the application will interact with other applications in your system landscape – take an end-to-end perspective on the ecosystem of the platform when defining stability performance.
Environment settings. Regression testing is crucial to understand whether the settings provided to the platform are adequate to accommodate the requirements of live interaction of users. There will be a multitude of regression testing scripts being defined by the development team which will need to be signed off post as part of the technical go-live. Although these scripts provide crucial information prior to functional go-live, it is important to also gain insights in the environment settings provided and compare where possible. This will allow you to better understand whether the settings provided for your specific purpose will also work when launched in an operational environment.
Hypercare. When launching new platforms there is always a period of hypercare required. There is only so much that can be designed and developed without live interaction of users. Things may not always run as smooth as you expect them to run once you hit that go-live button. Prepare your team and yourself as best as possible to be available to mitigate the operational impact of possible technical outage. Communicate. When (not if) things do go wrong, make sure to communicate as transparent as possible towards the affected stakeholders. You do not need to have all the information available before initiating communication. It is more important for your users to be aware that you are on top of the issue, that clear actions are being defined and that they can rely on being provided with a resolution time as soon as possible and root cause issue identification post-mortem. These learnings will then also help towards effective training of the BAU (business-as-usual) support team.
Redesign. Sometimes things don’t work out in the operational environment as they were envisioned to work in simulation environment. Don’t hesitate to look at your original design and include additional technical experts to audit and identify the possible weak points and create a plan of action to strengthen the interactions between the different components in the ecosystem of the platform.
FRONT-END DEVELOPMENT IS KING
Although integrated data flow and their corresponding impact on platform availability are key, your user doesn’t interact with these, your user interacts with the front-end.
Standardization. When implementing a new platform, it provides good conditions to reset the baseline of expectations for business operations. There might be different teams executing the same operations that have been tackling similar business challenge in a vastly different way. Aim to identify these before implementing a new platform and see how the platform identified can help standardize the approach. Change management. Create a framework that can help visualize future users how the standardized approach leveraging the existing platform capabilities will provide benefits in operations. Train users as extensively as possible before go-live. Re-train users during first month(s) is being used operationally, users will only experience the actual impact once they start actively using the new platform. They won’t be able to go back and rely on their old way of working. They will need your help to get used to the new platform, identify superusers so not all knowledge sharing will rely on a single person.
Customization. Manage expectations with the platform provider proactively that not all business operations may be possible to be standardized. Identify the gaps of the platform versus business operations expectations and create a roadmap of required developments in collaboration with the platform provider. Manage expectations of the users that not all capabilities might be available at the beginning and new functionalities may be released at different moments in time. Put in place a change release process to ensure new developments stability impact is assessed and mitigated prior to release. User engagement. Provide visibility of the developments being worked on and their corresponding release agenda to ensure users remain engaged to provide required test evidence. It is important to have user feedback on new functionalities to be released. This will help to not implement any unwanted changes in the operational environment.
USER IS QUEEN
The user is the queen of the technology platform implementation kingdom, and if the queen is not happy, no one is happy.
NPS (Net Promotor Score). Get feedback from users as frequently as possible. Visualize the achievements and celebrate with the team. Identify areas of opportunities to improve the user experience. Day in the life of… Spend time with users while they are performing their operational activities to get a first-hand observation how the tool is effectively used and to gain a better understanding of the observations shared by users. It will also give you a more substantial understanding of the possible struggles faced by operations to adopt the transformation towards a technology driven process instead of a knowledge driven process.
Agile project methodology. The main benefit of the agile project methodology, from my perspective, is the customer-mindset. Users are more involved in the development prioritization and release cycle. Having users engaged is important to not release a platform that is unwanted, will become unused and at the end of the day would not deliver any of the envisioned benefits.
Make users jointly responsible for the benefits to be reaped through the implementation of the new platform.
