Planning for mission success with Microsoft 365 Adoption: A Guide for IT Admins

[Karuana Gatimu]

As an IT admin in the public sector, you know how important it is to deliver secure, compliant, and efficient solutions for your organization. You also know how challenging it can be to keep up with the evolving needs and expectations of your users, stakeholders, and citizens. That’s why we’re excited and honored to partner with government agencies that deliver mission critical services by harnessing the power of tools and capabilities in Microsoft 365 Government. LA County became a model for other government entities looking to innovate and embrace technological solutions that they’ve already owned and the City of Corona drove efficiencies and improved their disaster recovery capabilities with Windows 365.

We strive to innovate with secure and compliant solutions for government customers. We’re committed to ensuring all our services delivered to Microsoft 365 Government environments adhere to the strict government compliance standards: FedRAMP, CJIS, ITAR, and DFARs. We also build unique capabilities such as accelerating collaboration for emergency response with Microsoft Teams Emergency Operations Center. Microsoft 365 adoption is not just about deploying new technology. It’s also about driving cultural change, technical readiness, and user adoption within your organization. It’s about planning for success and ensuring that your Microsoft 365 adoption journey delivers the outcomes and benefits that you and your stakeholders expect. 

To help you plan for a successful adoption journey, we’ve created this guide for IT admins based on our experience and best practices from working with thousands of public sector customers around the world. In this guide, we will cover the following topics: Planning for Success, How to Drive Stakeholder Management and Champions within Your Organization, Key Outcomes to Consider for Your Microsoft 365 Adoption Journey, Establishing a Baseline and Training Plan for Scaling Microsoft 365 Apps, and Understanding Your IT Management Tools and Empowering End Users. We will also share some examples and resources that you can use to support your Microsoft 365 adoption journey.  

Planning for Mission Success: Microsoft 365 Adoption Journey 

The first step to planning for success is to understand the Microsoft 365 adoption journey and the best practices that can help you navigate it. The Microsoft 365 adoption journey is a framework that outlines the key phases and activities that you need to consider when adopting Microsoft 365 in your organization. The framework consists of three overall phases with key activities in each designed to streamline your success: 

• Envision the Change: Define your vision, goals, scope, and timeline for your Microsoft 365 adoption project. Identify core team members, assess your current state, identify your gaps and needs, and create a business case and a project plan. 
• Onboarding: Complete technical readiness, identify Champions who will assist with peer to peer training and early adopters to provide feedback.  Design your overall roll out and communications plan as you partner with stakeholders, IT and champions across your organization.  Remember, planning for user change in phases is a wise choice.
• Train your org: Design and deliver training programs for your users and managers to help them learn how to use Microsoft 365 effectively. Provide ongoing support and guidance to ensure user satisfaction and adoption.  Utilize our free training solutions that allow you to customize the content like Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways or Viva Learning in combination with more traditional components like SharePoint and Microsoft Teams to ensure learning in the flow of work.
• Connect with communities: Connect with other public sector organizations and experts who have adopted or are adopting Microsoft 365 Government. Learn from their experiences, best practices, challenges, and solutions. 
• Secure your environment: Configure, monitor, and troubleshoot your Microsoft 365 Government environment to ensure its security, compliance, performance, and reliability. Optimize your environment to meet your changing needs and requirements. 

To help you plan your Microsoft 365 adoption journey, we have created some resources that you can use to get started today: 

Microsoft 365 Adoption Guide: This guide provides an overview of the Microsoft 365 adoption journey framework and the best practices for each phase. 

Microsoft 365 Adoption Framework: A framework with a detailed breakdown of the activities, tasks, roles, responsibilities, deliverables, and tools for your adoption journey. 

Microsoft 365 Adoption Toolkit: Utilize a collection of templates, checklists, surveys, presentations, videos, posters, flyers, emails, newsletters, FAQs, and other resources that you can use to support your adoption champions. 

By following the Microsoft 365 adoption journey framework and using the resources we have provided, you can plan for success and ensure that your Microsoft 365 adoption project is well-defined, well-managed, and well-executed. 

How to Drive Stakeholder Management and Champions within Your Organization 

The second step to planning for success is to drive stakeholder management and champions within your organization. Stakeholder management and champions are critical for driving Microsoft 365 adoption, as they can help you: Gain buy-in, support, and feedback from senior leaders, managers, and end users who are involved in or affected by your Microsoft 365 Government adoption project. Align your Microsoft 365 adoption project with your organization’s vision, mission, values, goals, and priorities. Address the concerns, expectations, and needs of your stakeholders and champions and ensure their satisfaction and adoption. Harness the influence, expertise, and enthusiasm of your champions to promote and advocate Microsoft 365 across your organization. Create a culture of collaboration, innovation, and transformation that fosters the adoption of Microsoft 365. 

To drive stakeholder management and champions within your organization, it’s helpful to build a strategy and plan here are some tips to get you started: 

• Create a stakeholder map: A stakeholder map is a tool that helps you identify and analyze your stakeholders and champions based on their interest, influence, impact, and attitude towards your Microsoft 365 adoption project. You can use a stakeholder map to prioritize your stakeholders and champions and plan how to engage them effectively. 
• Form a cross-functional adoption team: An adoption team is a group of people who are responsible for planning, managing, and executing your Microsoft 365 adoption project. Your adoption team should include representatives from different functions, roles, levels, and locations within your organization. Your adoption team should also include some champions who can act as role models, mentors, and advocates for Microsoft 365 Government. 
• Establish a champion program: A champion program is a program that helps you recruit, train, empower, and reward your champions who can help you drive Microsoft 365 Government adoption across your organization. Your champion program should include clear objectives, criteria, roles, responsibilities, benefits, and recognition for your champions. Your champion program should also include regular communication, training, support, feedback, and community activities for your champions. 

To help you drive stakeholder management and champions within your organization, we have created some resources that you can use as references: 

Build a Champion program: Champions help build, grow, and sustain your Microsoft 365 rollout by driving engagement. Explore our guide for starting your own Champion program.  

Develop storytelling for success: Transform your organization’s storytelling capabilities to share compelling success stories and amplify the impact of your adoption program. 

Manage, scale, and inspire with the Champion Management Platform: Built on SharePoint and integrated with Microsoft Teams, the Champion Management Platform helps you manage key aspects of your Champion program. 

By driving stakeholder management and champions within your organization, you can create a network of supporters and advocates who can help you achieve your Microsoft 365 adoption goals and outcomes. 

What are Key Outcomes to Consider for Your Microsoft 365 Adoption Journey 

The third step to planning for success is to consider the key outcomes and benefits that you can expect from your Microsoft 365 adoption journey. Outcomes and benefits are the results and value that you and your stakeholders can realize from adopting Microsoft 365 in your organization.  

Demonstrate the impact and return on investment of your Microsoft 365 adoption project. Communicate the success and progress of your Microsoft 365 adoption project to your stakeholders and champions. Motivate and inspire your users and managers to adopt and use Microsoft 365 effectively. Identify the gaps and opportunities for improvement and optimization of your Microsoft 365 Government environment. 

Some of the key outcomes and benefits that you can expect from your Microsoft 365 adoption journey are: 

• Improving security and compliance: One critical outcome that you can expect on your adoption journey is to protect your data and devices with built-in security and compliance features that meet the highest standards of government regulations. In the article linked above we share how government agencies are strengthening their security and optimizing their resources with Microsoft 365. 
• Embracing generational diversity: Another goal we’re seeing from public sector organizations is the need to embrace generational diversity in the workforce. Microsoft 365 adoption can empower your workforce with modern productivity, collaboration, and security tools can help your agency embrace generational diversity and across four critical areas: recruitment, retention, productivity, and learning.  

We hope that this blog has been helpful and informative for you. If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft 365 Government and how it can help you deliver secure, compliant, and efficient solutions for your organization, we invite you to visit our product page and community. You can also join the Microsoft 365 Champion Program here, access on-demand training here, and become a Service Adoption Specialist here. We would love to hear from you and support you on your Microsoft 365 adoption journey. Please feel free to share your feedback, questions, and success stories with us in the comments section below. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more blogs on Microsoft 365 adoption on the Driving Adoption community. If you have more questions or would like additional support on your adoption journey, please reach out to your local account teams.