Congratulations on deploying Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint! Did you consider goals, though? As in, what do you want to do to implement these new tools? It is critically important to set goals. Measurable goals for the short-term, intermediate, and the long-term. Goals should be set before, during, and on-going...especially since your usage and understanding will likely evolve over time.
Someone or some group will need to take ownership to define common goals that work for your organization. Common goals will be different for every organization because SharePoint means different things to different users. Will you focus on SharePoint Team Sites? Or maybe document collaboration?
There will be decision makers and techie people that are psyched about the changes! It is also important, however, to have your ear to the ground to know what people are thinking and talking about. This will be invaluable in setting your goals and defining a vision for SharePoint and Office 365 adoption. For example, do you want users to put stuff in OneDrive or SharePoint? Be sure to articulate and publicize your expectations. Also, be sure to review with your focus groups to make sure that the goals are achievable and measureable. Is your vision meeting business and user need?
How goals can help
Maybe you're making decisions about on-premises vs cloud and are using a hybrid approach. How long will you remain in that environment? Are you deploying Office 365 soon? Office 365 is a great solution. We love it and are finding that more than half of our clients have either already adopted or are planning on adopting it. As a best practice, it isn't advisable to adopt Office 365 and SharePoint in one fell swoop.
Back to goals. You'll need time to work out bugs, figure out how things are going to work (as in governance...a future blog post, in itself!), see how user adoption is going...and you may need to change your goals over time. Again, this is an ongoing and evolving process. Set measurable goals. Realistic ones. They don't need to be set just for the users. Consider functionality and cost or resources, even training. How is this enormous investment going to help you?
Set achievable goals, be flexible, and establish measurable success!
