Rolling Out the Plan

The specifics of your rollout will depend on the plans you've made. There are some basic processes you have to attend to in a rollout. Many of these processes are people-oriented processes, not technically oriented processes. This section focuses on the former. Rollout doesn't mean dropping a whole Exchange system on your organization at once. It means making Exchange available to specific systems administrators and users according to a carefully thought-out schedule. You should also go through a testing phase with specific users. Rollout to your general user population needs to be geared to your assessment of user readiness, perhaps at the departmental or subdepartmental level. Rollout also must be deeply rooted in the capacity of systems and user support staff to handle the many issues that arise during implementation of a major new software product. And, in all of this, don't forget that without information technology commitment and support, it's highly unlikely that you'll be able to smoothly pull off a successful Exchange rollout.

• Start in the Right Place You might start your rollout in the information technology (IT) department - maybe just with yourself, if you're part of IT. When you pick users, always start with users that will have the least impact until you are sure you have all the bugs worked out of the your deployment. Keep management informed of the users that will be involved in the initial rollout. Next, you might move on to samples of users based on the groupings that you uncovered in your user needs assessment or an assessment of user readiness for the change you are about to drop on them. Remember, you've been working with Exchange and its clients for a while. IT support and users might have had little exposure to it. The change you are bringing will shake their world up more than it does yours. Then move steadily onward until all users are up and running in Exchange. The key is to get Exchange out to all users as quickly as possible without crashing your organization. (Here we are referring to your real organization, not your Exchange organization.)

• Don't Forget Design during Rollout Remember that rollout is an integral part of the Exchange design process. As you step through your implementation plans, be ready to change your design. If something doesn't work, change it now. Don't let things pile up to the point that change becomes virtually impossible. How you schedule your rollout relative to user need and readiness as well as MIS support capacity will determine how able you are to keep up with change orders.

• Pay Close Attention to Users Whether you're in a test or production rollout phase, be sure to keep your big shot and plain old users in the loop. Get them committed to Exchange. Let them know if and when they're going to see a new e-mail client. Show them the client, just so they can see how really easy it is to use to get basic work done. Explain to them how they can use the client you plan to provide both to do what they're already doing and to get other tasks done.

  This is where user training comes in. You probably already know this, but user training is both essential and a major drain on resources. Spend lots of time planning user training. Think very carefully about the amount of time and dollars you're willing to devote to user training. Training is a very specialized activity. If you don't have enough training resources in-house, consider outsourcing user training. Know that some users will get it right away and some will come back again and again seeking answers to questions that were answered both in group training and one-on-one by user support personnel. Finally, remember that your Exchange rollout can be a great success technically, but if no one comes to the show, it will be considered a failure by your bosses or your clients and their bosses.

• Stay Close to IT Staff Keep IT staff involved and informed as well. An Exchange installation and implementation is a big deal for an IT department. Over time, just about everyone in IT will get involved with Exchange. IT staff should understand and welcome Exchange, not see it as a threat to their jobs. Train IT personnel as data-processing colleagues rather than just end users. You don't have to tell everyone in IT everything there is to know about Exchange. But be sure to talk to them about both server and client basics from a more technical perspective.