Don't ruin the go live

[ChrisF323949498]

You’ve spent months designing, coding and testing your new ServiceNow application for your employer/client, and you’re approaching go live.

You’ve got your licensing confirmed and approved, the Change approval has just come through and you Go live.

Technically everything is brilliant, Script includes are clean and all the bugs were fixed.

Except, your users 'hate' it.

Users immediately report ‘bugs’ and the sentiment of your application is poor.

I see this time and time again, the team building it know how it works and think it’s great however they’ve forgotten about their users.

They ticked all the boxes, the lunch and learns were hosted, comms went out, so what went wrong?

They never sold the story.

The lunch and learns were attended, mandated perhaps, but most users were remote, cameras were off, and that awkward silence for questions at the end was deafening.

Sell the story first

1. Why should we care about your new application?
2. How is it going to make my life easier?
3. How much time will it save me?

Then Train them

I’ve found the biggest thing that determines whether people love or hate an application, is how comfortable they are using it. The UI doesn’t have to be pretty, but if they aren’t comfortable using it, they won’t.

So try to reduce fear with

1. Communicating that they (hopefully) can’t break much, or things can be reversed if they do.
2. In application guidance – Tooltips for fields are a huge win here.
3. and of course, the training sessions and cheat sheets... but sell the story first (above!)

I think if you can sell the story and reduce the fear, the ROI is huge.

Actual things you can do:

1. Sell the story - Keep comms short and pretty - Images are key here! use AI if you need to! 😉
   
   
2. Make it clear - In application add:
   1. Tool tips – When they hover a field it explains it.
   2. Process flow (Formatters) – Showing the step by step process, similar to what you see in Change.
   3. Information messages
      1.       What does this record do?
      2.       What is the next step?
   4. Guided tours – of course.  Link
      
      
3. Keep it fun - Videos – Personally I’ll watch a short video, but reading a large article that isn’t pretty (useful images) is a harder sell.

What are your thoughts to how to improve ROI and reception of your new fancy application? Had any horror stories? Lessons learnt?

Thanks for reading! 😊

[julian_mills]

Chris, how would you say this fits into the strategic (and tactical) planning for an implementation - regardless of how large it was? 

[ChrisF323949498]

Hey Julian,

Thanks for the question, it's got me thinking more about this

Regarding Strategic - So I think our default strategy always has a few pillars including

1. Change management - So in the context of my article, although we always have this listed as an action item, I think sometimes it's a little (too) late in the project timeline(or perhaps just slips, due to implementation being seen as more critical) - So I think we adjust this to occur sooner, so we get user buyin as early as possible.
   I've sat with users during projects and showed them some handy SN features, and it's turned them from cynics of 'oh great another platform to solve our problems....again..' to actually becoming mini champions for change. Getting them on board early really makes a consultants life easier (and more enjoyable for everyone). 
   
   Having internal people get on board, is far more convincing and powerful for the rest of the company too.
   
   
   
2. Organisational readiness - Sometimes it feels that management decide to move to a new platform, but the employees aren't really ready. 
   I think perhaps another possible step in our strategy/plan, is to get a better understanding/research on our target audience.
   
   For example, I we were to launch a new brand, we'd do a lot of market research on our audience. However when we implement servicenow, I'm not sure we fully understand the internal users (employees) of the product. What are their ages? How open are they to change? Etc. 

So strategically, it's likely already in our plan - but I think tactically do it earlier, to understand users sooner, get buy in earlier and the upstream impacts I feel would be positive and exponential - because if everyone is excited and happy to go to work, the results are usually better.

Potentially some adjustments may be: 

1. Pre implementation surveys to gauge sentiment, get an idea of our audience.
2. Observing how users are using the platform (over their shoulder 1on1 sessions) 
3. Highlight wins and internal testimonials perhaps - Although this likely isn't something the project team are perhaps around for, this is likely more post go live by the BAU team.

Just a few thoughts, would be curious what others think

Cheers

 

[julian_mills]

Right! The type of answer I was looking for. Let's scratch a little more. 

Given the strategic nature (typically) of a SN implementation, I would imagine this would be a key item in any program managemnt plan, understanding not only the users/audience, but also, and specifically those that would be using it in anger to support the end customer. This is not a five minute checkbox item in a project task list. This is a significant piece that is necessary for a successful implementation - because success is not only a technical go-live with only a handful of defects, success is measured by adoption, and without this being paid attention from the get-go, and from a senior vantage point, the success of the project (arguably ANY project) is compromised. 

[ChrisF323949498]

Agreed, and I think it often doesn't get the focus it warrants.

I wonder if it's perhaps because technical bugs are glaringly obvious and have a binary result (Fixed or not?) where as adoption, user sentiment... it's a bit cloudy, users vary in their technical skills, experiences and appetite for change. 
I suppose surveys may also have a 'response bias' where the happy customers don't complete the surveys, so it's biased to a negative result already.

That said, a negative result from such a survey therefore shouldn't be an overall indication of a project failure - but perhaps, business justification for an additional project phase to improve adoption/sentiment and drive the change we initially aimed for.

Some of my fondest moments on projects have been sitting down with 'unhappy users' and showing them a few UI shortcuts, etc and visibly seeing their sentiment change. A rewarding days work! 

I wonder what metrics we could measure, to get a sense of adoption and sentiment, without a survey that's potentially open to bias 

Something for me to ponder 😁

Cheers