OFFICE FOR IT PROS

Office 2010: User Readiness + Creating A Training Plan
By Andy O'Donald, Product Manager, Microsoft Office
Just as you think about the phases of a deployment lifecycle, end user readiness has phases that can (and should) be integrated into your deployment plans for the smoothest experience and least productivity loss for your users.
Integrating a training plan with your deployment strategy.
Identifying all of the variables that are external to the Office 2010 experience itself, and that can impact the end user, during the planning phase is crucial to the success of your deployment. The first step is to focus on identifying the IT stakeholders in the deployment. For example, if you are doing a desktop refresh with both Windows 7 and Office 2010, and your organization has different IT team members responsible for operating systems and productivity software, make sure that there is tight coordination between the two to save time and IT training costs.
Next, if end user action is required during the deployment process (other than the rollout), make sure the training plan takes this into account. For example, if your deployment requires user data migration, incorporate communications to help users with this task. Of, if your company is switching to a Remote Desktop Service (or equivalent), plan for the additional training that will be required to familiarize users with this scenario.
Implement the training plan in phases.
Just as deployment takes place in phases, so should your training plan. The phases of a training plan are typically aligned with what you want the user to learn and do at each phase.

1. Raise awareness. Inform and excite your end users about the change. Focus on providing a timeline for all changes and explain what benefits the new version will bring. For a larger organization, this phase usually begins one to three months before rollout.
2. Mitigate disruption. Prepare users for "deployment day" by providing resources that minimize the "interruption" of the new technology. This includes providing resources that focus on the tasks that users currently perform, and communicating an escalation path if they have questions or encounter problems. This phase is especially important for customers moving from Office 2003 or earlier versions to Office 2010, and typically starts one week before deployment, continuing through the rollout.
3. Drive adoption. The final phase of your training plan should focus on users becoming proficient in the new productivity features. Ongoing IT communications about the more advanced training resources available can help users develop these skills. This is an ongoing process that starts about two weeks after the rollout.

Use a variety of learning resources and styles.
People adopt technology at different rates. Everett M. Rogers' "Diffusion of Innovations" uses a bell curve to explain that people fall into different categories when adopting new technology. This means that you should have some learning resources that can aid the people who are early adopters and just want to get back to work and then offer more extensive training to those who need more in-depth and hands-on time before they will be comfortable with the new software.
Luckily, Microsoft offers free resources for all phases of a training plan, and all types of users. Microsoft's Office division has a large user assistance team focused on delivering great end user content, mainly through http://office.microsoft.com. I want to introduce you to a few of the best tools and provide tips on how to apply each tool with different users in your organization. Let's dig in!

Productivity Hub – A key resource for raising awareness and all phases of user readiness training, the Office 2010 Productivity Hub is a SharePoint Server 2010 site collection that you can download and install to provide a fully customizable learning solution to help support ongoing end user training efforts. The Hub acts a central place for all your training efforts, and is pre-populated with hundreds of items of learning content including documents, videos, podcasts and other types of content.
Posters and Flyers – A great way to get people excited about Office 2010 is to post colorful posters and flyers in the cafeteria, by the water cooler, by the elevator, or in other locations where users can easily find them. A free toolkit containing posters, flyers, and other Office 2010 user readiness resources, available in 10 languages, is available from the Microsoft Download Center.
Home Use Program – When employees use the same software at home and work, they naturally gain more skills which helps improve productivity. The Microsoft Home Use Program (HUP) gives employees the flexibility to use the same software at home that they use at work. As users become familiar with the product by using it at home, training effort is drastically reduced.
Interactive Ribbon Guides – Available in 38 languages, Interactive Ribbon guides show users where their favorite Office 2003 menu and toolbar commands are located in Office 2010. You can install the guides on multiple computers, anddownload a printable list of Office 2010 commands and buttons in the form of a menu to ribbon reference workbook for each Office 2010 program. The guides are available in both online and downloadable formats.
"Getting Started" Resources – Help users transition to Office 2010 from an earlier version of Office, learn what's new, and find basic instruction for first-time use. This collection of resources includes short instructional videos, migration guides with answers to common questions, and more.
Office.com Training – These free, self-paced online courses include a short lesson covering various topics, a practice session for hands-on experience, a short self-test, and a Quick Reference Card the user can print for later use at the end of the course. The courses are available in over 20 languages online or in PowerPoint format.
Weekly Email Tips – Send tips and tricks via email to your users to help ease them into learning about the new features in Office 2010 with this zip file containing customizable email templates and the posters and flyers mentioned above.
MSL eLearning Courseware – If you are a Volume License customer with Software Assurance (SA), you may have access to various eLearning courseware from Microsoft Learning (MSL). Such courseware can help your employees become more productive with Office 2010 by providing them with flexible self-paced training options without impacting your budget.
Ribbon Hero 2 – Clippy's Second Chance is a free productivity application in the guise of a game that you can download and use to boost Office skills and knowledge around the office. The challenges focus on helping users complete real tasks with Office, but all with a fun twist. Take it one step further and run an IT-sponsored contest where every week people who complete all the challenges are entered into a random contest drawing.

We hope this overview helps your company look holistically at the user readiness and training options that can be leveraged to make your migration to Office 2010 a smooth and productive experience for everyone.
Andy O'Donald is a product manager in the Microsoft Office team currently focused on Office deployment and Office 365. Check out his TechNet Radio interview for answers to common IT pro questions on topics such as Office 2010 planning, deployment tools such as the Office Migration Planning Manager, end user resources, and the Office Web Apps.