It’s well accepted that any significant technology implementation must be accompanied by an organisational change program if it’s to succeed.

The implementation of Microsoft Teams certainly qualifies as a significant technology implementation but how disruptive is it likely to be to your organisation? Will the promised productivity gains flow immediately, or will there be a period of pain and effort before you start to see benefits flow?

Microsoft Teams implementations are not a one size fits all. Depending on your business context and ambitions, your approach will follow the typical risk/reward relationship. The higher the risk, the greater the emphasis on Organisation Change management needs to be:

At SWOOP we’ve been thinking long and hard about the role of analytics in supporting organisational change efforts. While change is instigated from the top, it’s at the individual level that change actually happens. We use the tagline: “Seeing how you work, changes how you work”.

Below we have modelled how SWOOP measures can be used within the popular Organisational Change framework called ADKAR (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement). ADKAR, like SWOOP, acknowledges that change happens at the Individual and Organisational level. In order for a team or organisation to change, all the individuals within that team must change. The SWOOP dashboard provides views at the Individual, Team, Business Segment and Organisational levels.

If Microsoft Teams is being introduced as an efficiency tool for business as usual (BAU) teams, all that might be required is to create an awareness that Microsoft Teams is available for use and coaching and related resources are available for those teams that choose to make use of it. This is the lowest risk approach to implementing Teams. Efficiency gains are available for those motivated enough to take advantage.

The next level of Microsoft Teams adoption would see an organisation looking to change the way new value is achieved through their project organisation. By their very nature, development projects will vary in scope, duration and resource requirements. An agile approach to resource utilisation and project delivery can be substantially enhanced by an effective Microsoft Teams implementation, as a hub for project team activities.

Finally, for those organisations looking to transform their whole style of working to a fully agile model (see Steve Denning’s description here); Microsoft Teams can play a central role in facilitating this.

The following table illustrates how SWOOP collaboration indicators can be used to monitor and assess organisational change at each level of change intensity and ADKAR phase:

The record for successful organisational change initiatives has not been good. Often the blame is placed at the feet of technology; and its prioritisation over the needs of people. Here we argue it’s not a matter of which one comes first, but how technology and people can work in tandem, to achieve the desired organisational change. We’ve shown here organisations can "bite off as much organisational change as they see appropriate" when implementing Microsoft Teams. Whatever level of change you aspire to, SWOOP provides data and analytics to support a successful journey.