Ambiguous & Unclear Requirements

The global pandemic also affects how organizations use Microsoft 365, and with so many of us still working from home, organizations adjust their focus towards providing an infrastructure that allows employees to keep working from home for at least the upcoming months. That's the reason why Microsoft Teams is experiencing a significant upswing these days. After the great success of my series on migration pitfalls, I decided to start another series of articles focussing on how to avoid Microsoft Teams pitfalls. The first article of my new series is about Requirements Discovery (which much better describes the active and dedicated process compared to the term 'Requirements Gathering', which to me, sounds more like collecting requirements, which are supposed to be already identified) and Expectation Management.

Before I continue with examples of what can go wrong with Requirements Discovery, let me explain first, what I mean with Requirements Discovery. Requirements Discovery is a critical active and dedicated process, which is performed as one of the first processes when new technology (e.g., Microsoft Teams) is about to be rolled out. Usually, interviews with stakeholders, sponsors, organizational entities and key users are scheduled to find out about essential needs. Multiple techniques can be used during Requirements Discovery and some of the popular techniques are whiteboard exercises, personas, role-play (Devil's advocate) and group interviews. As those techniques will result in a bunch of demands, needs, desires and requirements, the feedback taken during those exercises needs to the classified, structured, prioritized and reviewed. The outcome of this activity is a detailed list of requirements that will be used as the input for the upcoming project planning. Let me be very clear: professional Requirements Discovery is everything, but an easy task and professional Requirements Discovery requires experts. In other words: if you spend just 2 hours on an interview with the project sponsors on requirements, it is very likely, that the roll-out will be an epic fail! The more complex a software is (and Microsoft Teams is what I consider a complex software), the more time and money you need to spend on Requirements Discovery and the processing of the gathered feedback.

Let's get back to Microsoft Teams and let's see what common pitfalls are there when it comes to Requirements Discovery. The CoVid19 pandemic urges and challenges many organizations - especially those organizations not familiar with remote work or working from home. Many companies realize that there won't be a 'back to normal' anytime soon and that remote work will become the new normal - and this brings up the immediate need for a platform that can be used to support remote workers - and that's the devil of it! On the one hand, there is the immediate need to roll-out a new platform to continue with business as best as possible. On the other hand, there is the time-consuming Requirements Discovery process! If organizations favor a quick roll-out at the expense of an incomplete Requirements Discovery, Microsoft Teams will be used in an uncontrolled manner. If organizations spend time on an extensive requirements gathering, they might not be able to take advantage of Microsoft Teams when they need it the most - means: now!

I have worked with some organizations on rolling out Microsoft Teams, and I would like to share my experiences with Requirements Discovery and Expectation Management with you.

Microsoft Teams Meetings

Microsoft Teams is a great platform to host corporate meetings, but organizations need to look at questions like 'Who can attend meetings?' , 'Who can host meetings?' and 'What about external attendees?', 'Do you need a toll-free number?'. Are there any security policies, which deal with the sharing of data or recording of meetings or dial-in via phone or the usage of the lobby? Microsoft Teams is a compelling platform when it comes to hosting remote meetings. However, I recommend checking corporate policies and regulations very carefully as it is likely, that those policies and regulations affect how employees use Microsoft Teams to host or run remote meetings. Also, unions often have a significant say in the matter too.

Microsoft Teams Collaboration

Besides online meetings, Microsoft Teams is often used for collaboration purposes. This ranges from a team's channel used by only a few employees up to the collaboration of large groups. Before making teams and channels available to everyone in your organization, I recommend checking the requirements with stakeholders, team leads, the legal department and corporate communications thoroughly. Here are some examples of topics, I usually check: 'What kind of documents can be stored in Teams and which documents need to be saved to a corporate repository?', 'Are there any retention policies or DLP policies, that need to be considered?', 'Who can join a team and how is responsible for managing a team?', 'What about external users - can they join a team?', 'What about a teams lifecycle management?', 'Is there a process on how to apply for a new team?'. Sometimes, organizations also want to establish moderator roles for chats.

Microsoft Teams Live Events

Live Events in Microsoft Teams are a kind of broadcasting from few presenters to a vast audience. Although many companies utilize life events on a regular basis to reach out to their employees, it is advisable to thoroughly check requirements and expectations prior to scheduling the first live event. If the CEO of a company wants to establish regular meetings with all employees, review expectations first, before using Microsoft Teams live events for that. In addition, corporate communications and HR are likely to have some topics they want to be taken care of.

Summary

Microsoft Teams is an excellent tool for organizations to foster remote work - especially during the current global pandemic. Employers are well-advised to create an infrastructure that makes it possible to work from home for the majority of their employees - not for the upcoming weeks, but forthcoming months or even years. Working from home will become our new normal and if there is something good we can take from the current pandemic, it is that working from home actually works! However, even if there is an urgent need to establish a platform that supports working from home, I strongly advise against any hasty activities! Take your time to discover requirements and manage expectations. Sometimes, Requirements Discovery can be challenging as your respondent might not know about DLP or sensitivity labels and, therefore, can't formulate requirements. That's when skilled consultants and business analysts come into play. It is their task to prepare the requirements discovery in a way that stakeholders and sponsors can understand technical implications and can formulate requirements and expectations.

Making Microsoft Teams available to all employees in an organization is easy - rolling it out in a beneficial manner to ensure the best user experience is a challenging endeavor, but precisely that should be the goal! No one has ever said that requirements discovery and expectation management is an easy job! Some of you might interject that this is all related to Governance, and I would agree to a certain extend. Most (if not all) of the questions I mentioned here need to be answered in a corporate Governance document. However, first, you need to understand requirements and expectations before you can think about how to wrap them into Governance regulations.

If there is something I could wish for, it would be this: spend enough time and effort on Requirements Discovery, involve experts from out of your organization and create a dedicated team of internals and externals. Structured and classified requirements are the essential foundation for any further steps towards your Microsoft Teams implementation! If discovering requirements for a coherent roll-out of Microsoft Teams takes too much time, why not think about a roll-out in waves? Start with Meetings first and once you are ready, roll-out collaboration in a second wave and make Live Events a less prioritized feature.