User Adoption risks are growing rapidly for IT projects

Orga­ni­za­tions tend to con­cen­trate on 2 dif­fer­ent risks for IT projects, while a third one may be impact­ing the most their chances of success.

“Tech­ni­cal Risks” and “Busi­ness Risks” are widely used notions. The first com­prises the risks that can affect the IT infra­struc­ture (e.g., bring down the net­work, break a key busi­ness sys­tem, etc.); the sec­ond relates to the risk affect­ing the value of the project (e.g., how much time the new tool will save? by what level will it really cut the process costs?, etc.).

How­ever, there is a 3rd risk com­po­nent: the User Adop­tion risks. This com­po­nent has been over­shad­owed by the Busi­ness Risks com­po­nent. It should be con­sid­ered as an entity in its own right, because given its grow­ing impor­tance, the con­se­quences of over­look­ing it are dire. .

User Adop­tion risks are increas­ing rapidly with the chang­ing global environment

User Adop­tion as a key risk area is noth­ing new (the first CRM deploy­ments are a clas­sic exam­ple) but its impact is ris­ing sharply under the pres­sure of a key prin­ci­ple and a deep trend.

Atten­tion Scarcity as a fun­da­men­tal shift is well estab­lished. Atten­tion scarcity impacts IT projects at 2 dif­fer­ent lev­els. First, any new IT appli­ca­tion rolled out by IT has to com­pete with an ever more valu­able and decreas­ing frac­tion of end-users’s atten­tion. If the cost/benefit ratio of using the new tool is not imme­di­ately clear, this atten­tion will be invested in a more valu­able tool or activ­ity. At a sec­ond level, the scarcity of atten­tion makes it even more harder to com­mu­ni­cate the value pro­vided to end-users. The vol­ume of infor­ma­tion bom­barded on each employee in and out­side the orga­ni­za­tion is grow­ing expo­nen­tially by the day. Any com­mu­ni­ca­tion plan or “change man­age­ment” plan, as it is often called, will com­pete with this.

Of course, adop­tion can be man­dated, and this is part of the cost/benefit ratio. If employ­ees are fired for not using an appli­ca­tion, they will use it, albeit mechan­i­cally, with­out extract­ing value, and more often than not decreas­ing their pro­duc­tiv­ity by not using another, more effi­cient tool. Cost/benefit ratios can dif­fer between indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions, and man­dat­ing can work, though this is more often termed “align­ing the incen­tive structure.”

The other macro-trend that increases the pres­sure on cor­po­rate IT projects is the recent avail­abil­ity of appli­ca­tions span­ning all domains, com­bin­ing both excel­lent qual­ity and very low cost. If users are not happy with their corporate-provided tools, they will just use these appli­ca­tions with­out mak­ing any effort to get past their first impres­sion of the cor­po­rate tools. For instance, con­sider about the num­ber of cor­po­rate teams leav­ing behind Share­Point for using Base­Camp or even Facebook.

The impact of a weak User Adoption

If your project is not reach­ing a suc­cess­ful crit­i­cal mass in terms of user adop­tion, then your orga­ni­za­tion is exposed on sev­eral fronts:

• ROI is of course decreased, not to say neg­a­tive. The time to imple­men­ta­tion of the revised work­flows is con­sid­er­ably larger, with the dis­rup­tion and pro­duc­tiv­ity loss that ensue.
• The IT function’s rep­u­ta­tion is impacted neg­a­tively, as the project is seen as drag­ging over time and not sat­is­fy­ing the needs of users.
• Secu­rity expo­sures rise each time a team chooses to switch to a con­sumer web appli­ca­tion to man­age its team workflows.

Rec­og­nize cor­po­rate IT is now com­pet­ing within mar­kets, and man­age accordingly

To avoid these pit­falls, the IT func­tion needs to change its mind­set and view of itself. Instead of deploy­ing tools where user adop­tion is taken for granted, IT lead­ers must real­ize they’re com­pet­ing with other appli­ca­tions and need to win the employee’s busi­ness, just as any prod­uct avail­able on the con­sumer mar­ket. Of course, a large part of IT projects are sim­ply required for end-users, but the dif­fer­ence in user adop­tion pace is not less sig­nif­i­cant nor less valu­able to gain.

Sim­ple change in the­ory but deeply dif­fi­cult in prac­tice. Indeed, this raises com­plex orga­ni­za­tional issues at the group level, as well as draw­ing on skills not always exist­ing among IT groups.

So, how to improve? For a start, User Adop­tion needs to be con­sid­ered along­side Tech­ni­cal and Busi­ness risks from the start of project eval­u­a­tion and plan­ning. The projects that cumu­late too much User Adop­tion risks should be mod­i­fied or can­celled out­right if their chances of fail­ure are too high. Too often, User Adop­tion is addressed as “change man­age­ment” only before deployment.

IT needs to imple­ment an inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion infra­struc­ture that matches the one avail­able exter­nally. Com­mu­ni­cat­ing the value of an appli­ca­tion to end-users with poor screen­shots sent via emails will not com­pete effec­tively with the effi­cient screen­casts avail­able on YouTube or the vendor’s web­site. If your inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels are not match­ing the exter­nal ones (how do you dis­trib­ute a video for exam­ple? any medium with viral capa­bil­i­ties?), the first step is to close the gap. Doubt the impact? Look at the Base­camp tour and com­pare with your “train­ing” for sim­i­lar inter­nal tools…

For­get com­mu­ni­ca­tion and think mar­ket­ing. IT must not sim­ply com­mu­ni­cate, it must grab the atten­tion then con­vince, quickly. Again, the IT func­tion is com­pet­ing for end users’ atten­tion as if it were yet another appli­ca­tion in the wild. You of course have a huge advan­tage, but it is too often wasted. Make sure all your com­mu­ni­ca­tion plans are not only excel­lent but also remark­able.

Another alter­na­tive is of course to sim­ply use con­sumer appli­ca­tions as cor­po­rate tools. The Google Apps suite may not be the best in the world, but many of your employ­ees use it at home and would be happy to use it at work too. If you imple­ment blogs, why choose any­thing else than Word­press Mu (or Mov­able Type if you pre­fer)? To sur­vive among the plethora of choices, con­sumer appli­ca­tions must com­pete on design, sim­plic­ity, effi­ciency. When lead­ers emerge, you can safely assume that, if they meet your require­ments, end-users will adopt them in heartbeat.

So, can you iden­tify one past project which failed by not real­iz­ing its tar­get in terms of user adop­tion? Would the out­come have been dif­fer­ent if it had been rec­og­nized as an inde­pen­dent risk area on its own? Com­ment away!

Photo credit: - Nolly