Forum Discussion
MicrosoftOffice 365 Deployment Approach - Big Bang vs. Serialized Deployment
We've deployed big bang - as being a large organisation it takes us quite a while to mobilise for change so multiple change / deployment events just wouldn't work for us.
So currently if you drop onto our pilot you move fully into 365 world running all workloads, EXO, SPO, SFB and also cloud migrated mail. The only future difference will be you'll also get a new Win10 device at the same time.
Adoption has been smooth but we've had dedicated resource providing a hand over experience to each user - they get about 30 minutes to bring them up to speed with the new features but we're finding now we have plenty of people on the platform that users are learning by osmosis.
Any issues we've had have been entirely related to co-existence with legacy systems rather than any issues with 365 itself!
MicrosoftThanks Loryan. To clarify my reference to big bang vs. serialized, I am asking about deployment of Office 365 workloads - i.e., do you deploy all Office 365 workloads at the same time or in a serial fashion; rather than rollout strategy across a user base.
Our approach is to do the more common / mission-critical workloads first such as Exchange & ProPlus, then things like Skype for Business or OneDrive for Business due to their relative simplicity, then move along to things that are more complex and challenging such as SharePoint/Teams/Yammer.
We tend to work on a quarterly implementation cycle per product.
- Matt Wolodarsky
Thanks Loryan. I appreciate the perspective.
We've heard from a number of customers that there are significant benefits from deploying all workloads at once, including many of our larger customers who want to take advantage of the synnergies from scenarios that cross multiple workloads. A lot of the value in Office 365 are scenarios that enable users to leverage capabilities across the suite. Many also found it less disruptive to their end users to touch them once with a big bang, rather than multiple touches for the various workloads.
To your point, I can see for some customers how a serialized approach may be preferred.
- It depends on your timeframe for big bang. I completely agree - the more workloads they use at the same time the better, but so many customers we come across are wedded to Outlook, File Explorer and handsets. So we usually have a program of works, but our big bang would take a minimum of a few months as we wrap *a lot* of change management to ensure success of every workload at every step of the way.
- Matt Wolodarsky
Hi Loryan - you raise an important point re: help end users with the change to the new tools (i.e., awareness communications, training, etc.). We provide a fair bit of information and resources to help with this. Check out http://fasttrack.office.com.
In terms of end users who have their "preferred" tools (such as Outlook) that cause them to resist any new tools, one strategy that we've seen work is to encourage these end users to begin using something like Office 365 groups. It's a great way for end users to access the broader set of capabilities of Office 365 (storing files on OneDrive, scheduling group meetings on Skype for Business, using a shared OneNote notebook, etc.) while remaining in their familiar outlook client.
You can learn more about Office 365 Groups here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Learn-about-Office-365-groups-b565caa1-5c40-40ef-9915-60fdb2d97fa2?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
And, check out these Office 365 Group scenarios in our productivity library here: http://fasttrack.microsoft.com/office/envision/productivitylibrary#?products=outlook-groups
