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!
I have found that going Big Bang has had the most success for adoption as you don't break the collaboration by rolling out features piece by piece in a serialized way. Office 365 has such integrated workloads that serialized means lots of rework to help users understand the bigger picture later. A scenario such as 'How to do a successful meeting' etc may include many workloads such as Outlook, Skype, OneNote and Team Sites or OneDrive. This requires all workloads to be 'turned on' as these are all inter-related features for good collaboration. I see/work with user frustration every day when it goes serialized. If you build a good change/adoption strategy that breaks down Office 365 into small (scenario) chunks and educate over a period of time this helps with user change fatigue. The more a scenario is tailored to the specific organisation the better the adoption rate. Just choose the scenario that will give you the most traction to solve a pressing business issue so users achieve their 'ah ha' moment!