Challenge:    As a technology program manager for my organization I manage the development and  deployment/adoption of new platforms to replace legacy platforms for the purposes of enabling  efficiencies in the business processes and reduction of technical debt. We had developed a new  platform and had created an aggressive plan for adoption of the same and eventual  decommissioning of the old platform; Our assumption was that adoption would be quick as the  new platform was richer in functionality as well as easier to use given usage of latest  technologies. However, in reality we found that adoption rates were low and there was marked  resistance by the users despite the fact that detailed training sessions both onsite as well as via  webcasts were conducted. We had to re-plan our phased rollouts a number of times and this led  to increased frustration within management as well as the technology teams who had to support  two platforms at the same time. The general perception for slow pace of adoption and resistance  was that the training material was not properly designed and perhaps the training sessions  needed to be more hands on and engaging.     Selection:   Some of the program / product managers had recently undergone design thinking sessions and  at this stage the “Learning Launch” tool seemed to be apt tool to quickly validate our assumption  that “inadequate” training was the key reason for slow adoption of the new platform.    Application:   We decided to conduct a couple of learning launches to validate our assumption that inadequate  training was the root cause of slow adoption of the new platform. As preparation we did some  usage analysis of who the power users of the legacy platform were as well as who were the ones  who were attempting to use the new platform relative to others. We conducted two workshops  and corralled a diverse sampling of power users of the legacy platform as well as new platform.  The goal of the workshop was to walk through in detail their key use cases and in light of existing  operating model and processes.  For the first learning launch apart from the power users’ key stakeholders from management,  product managers, developers and trainers were also invited. The team went through a 3 days  intense workshop where we layered key use cases, compared features / functionality between  the legacy and new platforms. There was discussion / debate on how parity would be achieved  between the two platforms. It quickly became clear that sequencing of the delivery of the key  features was not done appropriately and “missing” functionality was root cause of the lack of  adoption. This exercise also helped baseline and formalize the process which would be used to  establish priorities going fwd.   2nd learning launch was also conducted in the form of a workshop and this time we also included  user experience designers.   Instead of comparing functionality and features the focus was on  reviewing how the features were laid out in the new platform. Participants were divided into  teams with one dedicated user experience person facilitating the review of the various screens  and features. The UX people also conducted one on one interviews with the key people playing  the personas.  Once the feedback was consolidated and normalized it became clear that there  were aspects of key functionality that were hidden and required multiple clicks to get to, also in  some instances related functionality was not consolidated and required navigation to multiple

tabs. It quickly became evident that user experience was not appropriately considered when the  platform was being designed and UI developers who don’t necessarily have the skills for coming  up with intuitive designs were utilized. This exercise also helped all the players collectively  improve their understanding and appreciation of key user centric design principles especially for  platforms such as ours.     Insight:  The insights I gleaned from conducting the two learning launches were contrary to our key  assumptions at the beginning of the process. The first insight gained was users should have been  involved in the sequencing of key features which would have enabled the rollout of the more  used features on the new platform hence aiding adoption and buy in from them.  The second  insight gained was that the product managers should consider more involved user experience  (UX) design during definition of prototypes and include a broader sampling of end users. This  would enable surfacing of common themes of usage and challenges which would make the  prototypes as well as end platform more user friendly thus aiding eventual adoption.  The  exercise also helped all the participants i.e. management, active users of the platform, product  managers, developers, trainers and designers agree on common issues, principles of design  which definitely aided the process of building consensus for all future exercises.     Approach:  Our team would have to review the insights gained from the two learning launch activities and  incorporate the same into all future feature prioritization as well development / prototyping  activities. This approach is suitable to test hypothesis or assumptions around problems especially  the ones around platform development and deployment such as ours. This will enable the  deployment of platforms that are closer to what the actual users want such that there are no  surprises during rollouts.   Another valuable aspect of the Learning launch sessions was that they  were collaborative in nature and helped instill a common understanding of the issues, concerns  and reach conclusion on solution approaches.

