THE BEST PRACTICES AND PAIN POINTS OF IMPLEMENTING

SHAREPOINT TRAINING Scott Lavoie

Software Training Consultant

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Presentation is available if you have a memory stick or take my business card and email me to get a copy.

scott.lavoie@rogers.com

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Agenda Bio highlights Training Strategy Document Needs Analysis Instructional Design E-learning Pilot Training Helpdesk Mentoring Rollout Logistics Evaluation Communications Plan Sustainment Plan

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Bio Highlights: Scott Lavoie 13 years experience in software training roll-

outs, private and public sectors. 6 years of work experience in the following

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software: Content/Document Management Corporate Governance Records Management Digital Asset Management

Built the training departments from the ground up at 2 ECM software companies.

Independent Training Consultant based in the Toronto area.

Email: scott.lavoie@rogers.com

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Training Strategy Document Extremely Important!!! Write a formal training strategy to organize

the rollout. A formal strategy is necessary to inform

management what is needed for a successful rollout.

If you cannot get the resources and/or budget you need, then your covered.People will try to blame training…guaranteed.

The strategy makes it more difficult for others to blame you for training mistakes.

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Needs Analysis Determine user roles:

End User, 2-daysPower User, 2-daysProject Team Collaboration, ½ to 1- dayHelpdesk, 4- daysOffice 2007 or 2010 New Features and

Integration, 1-day Advanced Training for Power Users (Down the

road): InfoPath Forms, 1-dayDesigner - Intro, 1-dayDesigner - Advanced, 1-day

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Needs Analysis

Interview stakeholders to determine workflow

Crucial to incorporate workflow and metadata examples in exercises

Leverage business analysis documentation into the training materials

Determine learning objectives for each user group, which will drive your curriculum.

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Needs Analysis

Very common mistake: DON’T FORGET TO INCLUDE END USERS.

Including end users in the needs analysis of the training process ALWAYS improves user adoption.

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Instructional DesignIN A PERECT WORLD Training guide with hands-on exercises

For example, a 2-day End User SharePoint classroom-based training guide is approximately 150 pages.

Try to create:functionality Exercise bookNavigation handout with SharePoint definitions.Quick reference guides - step-by-stepFAQsJob-aids, for example, end user business

processes and workflows.E-learning (will discuss later)

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Instructional Design“A 150 page training guide would be a

luxury at my company”.

NO TIME!!! Create an exercise booklet to teach functionality (30 to 40 pages).

An exercise booklet will appear “light”, but better than nothing.

Additional handouts will help beef up the training documentation and give people something to take away.

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Instructional Design

How much should I customize training documentation for different jobs among user groups?Writing courses for different jobs is time

consuming, however, sending people to a 2-day course when only 20% of the material applies to their job will NOT work.

Divide end users between who will create SharePoint sites and who won’t.

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Instructional Design

Look at training outlines and agendas from SharePoint training companies to get started:MindsharpCritical Path

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Instructional Design…Lastly Incorporate your governance policies in

the training material or your end users will be lost and not comply.

AT THE VERY LEAST have your governance policy documentation as a handout and refer to it over and over again in the training.

Without enforcement, governance policies are just suggestions…drive the message home!!!

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E-learning E-learning is the most successful when used

for end user support or sustainment purposes (my opinion).

Many employees think of training as a reward and prefer classroom-based training, which typically means resistance to the e-learning format and to SharePoint.

To achieve compliance tie e-learning completion to HR annual performance reviews.

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E-learning One of the biggest failures of e-learning is not

the quality of the e-learning, but the education and promotion of the e-learning format.

Educate, Educate, Educate!!! Promote, Promote, Promote!!! “If you build it, they will come” does NOT work

for e-learning, just Kevin Costner.

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E-learning You must have a communications plan You have to walk people through an e-learning

module to promote it. A classroom-based rollout is a perfect

opportunity to introduce and promote e-learningA formal orientation of a SharePoint training

portal, should be part of your class.

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E-learning: Simulation software

Create short SharePoint simulation modules for functionality. 2 to 5 minutes long…keep it short and sweet

Popular simulation software: Adobe Captivate 5.5, US$799 TechSmith Camtasia, US$299

Provide step-by-step PDF docs beside e-learning links for users to print.

Create a clickable Table of Contents for e-learning modules to get at functionality easily.

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E-learning: Online and live Popular synchronous (real-time) software:

Cisco WebExAdobe Connect Microsoft Live Meeting

DescriptionWorks well for Q & A sessionsNo longer than 2 hour sessions at a timePassive learningNo way of knowing if people are paying attention.People are easily distracted by email, coworkers and

work commitments when participating at their desks.○ Try to incorporate exercises, which need to be sent

ahead of time so users can print them.○ TIP: Check-in often with users to monitor their

exercise progress by doing a roll call.18

Pilot Training Extremely valuable exercise, highly

recommended. Select cross-section of users for each

course based on job function and computer suaveness.

Ask managers to recommend employees who will contribute to the pilot process.

Give students a pen and pad of paper to make notes during the pilot.

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Pilot Training

Allow students to make comments, but find a balance between asking questions and writing down comments.

Be CLEAR, CLEAR, CLEAR to set expectations that this is a pilot, not training and “we appreciate your help in developing the training program”.

After training, have a feedback session to consolidate all the comments.

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Pilot Training

Feedback Session:Have someone take notes, while you lead

the class through the student comments. A small gift for students is a nice

gesture.

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Helpdesk InputHelpdesk is KEY to user feedback.Have helpdesk produce a top 10 list of most

asked SharePoint questions by users.Attend Helpdesk departmental meetings to

compile top 10 list as booking your own meeting time with helpdesk is typically difficult.

Send most common questions from top 10 as communications links to a FAQs knowledge base web page in SharePoint training portal.

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Helpdesk Input

Must have buy-in from management to leverage helpdesk knowledge.

You are asking helpdesk for help, this is in your best interest, not the helpdesk…really. Don’t expect enthusiasm to help you.

Feedback should also be used to improve training materials and delivery.

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Mentoring

Have a formal meeting with each mentor to explain the expectations and their responsibilities as a mentor.

Include them in meetings during the rollout and make them members of the training team.

Reward them with salary or external training (advanced courses)

Give them recognition for their leadership and SharePoint evangelism.

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Mentoring Create a mentoring team from your power users.

They can share information and support each other.

Mentors are your eyes and ears in the trenches. They will be key resources for evaluating user

adoption. Make them informed of all communications before

it’s released to the organization, so mentors can answer questions and clarify…never leave them in the dark.

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Registration and Rollout

How are you going to register users? Are you going to use a Learning

Management System (LMS)? If not, can IT help with a simple

homegrown online registration web page?

You can use an Excel spreadsheet in SharePoint to allow students to self-register, simple and effective!

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Registration and Rollout

Question: In large organizations if your users don’t register for classes, what do you do?

Assign a choice of classes to a department and have the manager responsible for having employees sign up within a specific period of time, such as a week.

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Registration and Rollout

Plan on a 20% absent rate of classes. Plan for a second sweep of training to

catch people who missed due to sickness or vacation.

Trainers for the rollout should not train beyond 3 days/week.

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Registration and Rollout

Do not train management first. Work the kinks out of training first before bringing in management for training.

If management is dissatisfied with the software that attitude can trickle down to employees and can affect user adoption.New York Publishing example

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Evaluation

Don’t stop reevaluating and tweaking until all the courses have been nailed down.

Anticipate the needs of the next department to receive training: Job specific trainingMore training or lessComputer suaveness Age demographics

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Evaluation

You have:Student evaluation forms HelpdeskMentors providing feedback

What else? Pick up the phone and speak to

managers and students.

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Communications Plan Company newsletter – have a dedicated training

section Tips, tricks and shortcuts Employee spotlights about how they are using the

software and why they like it. Announcements as training date approaches, not

just emails, put signs in the cafeteria, water cooler, etc.

Hand out pamphlets in the morning or lunch time. Information sessions about the training such as

lunch and learns and online information sessions. Ask to show up at departmental meetings to give a

brief presentation on SharePoint and the training…HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

Road show

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Communications Plan

Hit them and keep hitting them from every different angle and direction.

Say it and say it again in as many different formats and ways as possible.

Don’t just notify them about SharePoint training, tell them the benefits of SharePoint

Evangelize, Evangelize, Evangelize

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DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?

“Attended training, waited 2 months for GO LIVE, forgot everything”.

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Sustainment Plan

HUGE COMMON MISTAKE:The sustainment plan starts on the Go Live

date not after the start of the training rollout.

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Sustainment Plan

Create a Sustainment Plan to show management. Sustainment is a separate project than the

training rollout. Sustainment involves the ongoing

learning and support materials for users.It’s unfair and unrealistic for helpdesk to

assume this responsibility.

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Sustainment Plan What you can do outside of the

classroom, during rollout:Walkabouts the day after training.Work closely with helpdesk to identify

trouble spots early in the training.Monitoring user’s activity for compliance, in

other words, are they using SharePoint.Create a training portal for learners

○ Have helpdesk direct users to portal to find answers. BTW, users will not like this, but do it anyways…tough love works.

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Sustainment Plan training portal: E-learning software simulation modules

New employees should have their own training portal site section to learn SharePoint. They are a different audience than existing employees.

FAQs Wikis Knowledge base Discussion board

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Sustainment Plan Keep your training portal up to date or people will not

trust it and ignore it. Contests work! Ask your Microsoft sales guy for free

stuff. Publish contest winners in company newsletter to promote user involvement.

Periodic training for new hires and people moving into new positions.

A second round of training for stragglers/vacation/sick is always needed, but don’t announce it until after the initial rollout.

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Technology training is about change management , not technology.

Questions?

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