Learning framework for Office 365

"life is too short to go through a big learning curve"

Total size of the public cloud Software as a Service (SaaS) market from 2008 to 2020 (in billion U.S. dollars)

These data show the market is growing exponentially and companies will keep engaging its customer by constantly innovating new products or features. Microsoft is no exception to this. Office 365 is one of the biggest platform available out there by any means or standard, and to be relevant in the game Microsoft will keep innovating it.

(Office 365 growth in last few years)

The constantly changing environment creates a different level of challenges for IT Professionals to actively keep an eye on the rapidly changing environment (new features and services) along with keeping up with their job.

Since every person on this planet has an equal amount of time, it is essential and beneficial to reduce the learning curve. Companies are doing a great job by creating various platforms and avenues which empowers individuals to constantly involve and engaged. However, it is not enough!.

Despite having so many resources available online it is a big challenge for a newbie or seasoned professional to systematically enhance their knowledge with the limited time they have. This brings to a question how it can be addressed? We've pretty much-standardized everything from restaurant menu to project management template so how about standardizing the parameters or the dimensions every product or service can be looked at in terms of learning.

What is learning a framework?

A learning framework is a unique and specifically tailored architecture which suits individual or companies learning demand. It consists of various parameters or dimensions by leveraging which you assess or learn new products or service.

These parameters should be standardized so every person in the organization or an individual level always learn or assess products or features using the same parameter.

This gives an added advantage which is whoever uses it, they all are on the same page. Learning the technology and assessing it using the same dimension.

What are its building block?

I've identified following key areas, which helps to assess products from various angle. Depending on your need and area of expertise you're trying to build, you can be tailored it.

1. Sales and Marketing: Microsoft does pretty good job marketing their products and services. Having few links handy will help to get a 10000 ft overview of the product or services.
2. Business Case: The only reason any company adopts or use any product or service is to address the specific business challenge. It could be anything cost saving, market tread, technology sunsetting, improve productivity, etc. Have a good idea about what business problem product/service is addressing provide you an absolute clarity. So, always have a business case ready, in case if you're in a situation where you've to justify your decision.
3. Overview: A brief overview of the product or service always helps to understand the rationale behind its creation. Also, helps to make others understand.
4. Assessment: Any product or service has some pre-prerequisite. Hence, before you plan to deploy it is essential to perform readiness assessment. This will give a good idea of the current state and what it will take to roll our new product or service.
5. Planning and Preparation: A detail planning and preparation is the key to the success of the project. Putting together comprehensive list along with resource required and roles & responsibility of each resource will ensure a hassle-free implementation
6. Migration: Having a detailed guide about what goes into the pre-migration, during the migration and post-migration will help you to plan for any known or unknown issue. This will also help to address if you come across any unintended obstacle.
7. Optimization: Once you've deployed any product or service, not it is time for optimizing it. There are many ways you can optimize it such as performance, usability, etc.
8. Governance and Administration: Not having a proper governance defined and enforced is the definitely a recipe for the disaster. Not having proper governance and by not enforcing it allow product or service to grow without any boundaries. Eventually, at one point time, it becomes a nightmare to manage it. As a result, its maintenance costs increase exponentially.
9. User Adoption: No matter how good or excellent your product or service is, if no one is using it, it has no value. Change is always difficult, it required a paradigm shift. Hence, it is essential to have a plan ready for how you're going to convince your customer about the benefits of this new product or service. Depending on the organization culture, being a bit creative will certainly help.
10. Security and Compliance: Growing cybersecurity threat requires any product or service to be secure, not only within the premises of the organization but wherever the data/content goes. The old security model is no longer effective, as the workforce is becoming mobile and would like to use their preferred devise. Hence, it is essential to ensure security goes along with the data.
11. PowerShell: An essential tool to have in your bucket. It makes life really easy by automating many simple to complex tasks. It allows accessing each and every feature exist under the hood and get maximum benefits out of it. Identify common tasks which need to be carried out on the daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Having the scripts ready reduce the manual efforts significantly.
12. Customization and third-party integration: SAS eco-system is growing exponentially. Companies are coming together for a collaboration with other products and service. In the current scenario, no product or service can survive alone. Hence, finding out what level of customization is needed to address your business need is essential. This can be addressed either customizing existing product/service or leveraging third-party product to enhance the stability or usability.
13. Products and Tools: No product/service can satisfy each and every requirement of your organization. Hence, finding out what are the complimentary products/service exist which enhance the functionality will really help to get maximum benefits out of the product/service.
14. References and Training:  A last but not the least, educating your customer is the key to the successful roll-out. Creating a specifically tailored training just for your organization which not only provides the familiarity or terminology your customer is most aware of but also helps to increase the adaptability. Hence, it is crucial to have quick reference guide training which helps users to overcome any learning hurdles.

How is it useful?

This framework offers many benefits from reducing the learning curve to lowing the operating cost. Also, the biggest advantage it offers is to bring each and every member at the point where they not only analyze the existing product or service by the same parameter but it also allows the opportunity for the organization to grow its maturity and essentially become the gold standard.

This also empowers organization or individual to roll-out product or service in a seamless manner. As a result, this reduces the efforts which are directly propionate to the cost.

Please feel free to share your thoughts/feedback. Also, do let me know if you'd like me to elaborate any of the above-listed points.

Happy Learning! 

Satish Nagpal