SharePoint and User Adoption
October 11, 2009
I have been working through the SharePoint search related items that Overflight generates. One article “Ideas to Increase End Use Adoption” did not interest me when I first read it. I went back this morning and reviewed the article in SharePoint Buzz because it connected with a remark I heard in a meeting in Arlington, Virginia, last week. The article is straightforward. Some SharePoint features don’t get a quick uptake by users. In order to boost use of a SharePoint system, the author presents a number of ideas. These range from in person training to creating FAQs and other textual information to help users understand the features and functions of a SharePoint system. The article identifies multimedia content as a useful idea. A community-based support service is another good idea.
Now the question, “Why did I return to what is a common sense article about a software system?”
The answer is, “Users resist systems that create more hassles than solved problems.”
The SharePoint blog post underscored three points:
- User ignored systems are a problem, not problem solvers. Maybe training will help resolve this problem, but if users don’t use a system, there’s a deeper issue to resolve. It may be interface. It may be performance. It may be the functions are unrelated to the work task. I don’t know but I know there is a problem.
- Vendors are trying to resolve marketing issues by pushing users in certain directions. When I looked at the list of ways to boost adoption and usage of SharePoint functions, I thought about how some of my grade school teachers approached subjects.
- Microsoft’s new emphasis on UX or the user experience may be a lower cost way to solve deeper issues of a system’s design. The system itself may not deliver a solution, so the easier route is to put some lipstick on the beast and call it a day.
In my opinion, the discussion of user acceptance of certain SharePoint-based applications may point to a deeper and more troubling set of issues within the architecture of SharePoint itself. A developer may like what he or she has built. But users who ignore the service are making clear that something is off base. I am not sure training or an interface can do much if the problem resides within the deeper core of the SharePoint suite.
Stephen Arnold, October 11, 2009
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2 Responses to “SharePoint and User Adoption”
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Why are you so sure that the problem resides within the deeper core of the SharePoint suite?
Joris,
Maybe it is a trivial problem. Because SharePoint is a collection of many functions, there may be no deeper core. Nevertheless, SharePoint can be a tricky beastie from its glistening surface to its tangle of subfolders. But I am an addled goose and cannot be counted on to know the difference between deep problems and code acne.
Stephen Arnold, October 12, 2009