Microsoft 365 Knowledge Management

Currently there are over 700 items on the Microsoft 365 Public Roadmap. Every week, 20-30 new items appear in the O365 Tenant Message Centre. The challenge facing IT organisations is how do they manage the volume and velocity of changes being rolled out by Microsoft.

An IT organisation must have a Cloud Operating Model that has the ability to review, assess and manage these changes in the same timeline as Microsoft's delivery model. An IT organisations should carry out a set of due diligence activities (equivalent to the approver process in a more traditional change process) before these changes are rolled out by Microsoft to their users.

Each applicable change or new service needs to be assessed for not only the value it will provide to the users but also any adverse impact that it may have and also what options do you have to configure, delay, or switch-off.

What must also be considered is:

• what if any communication needs to be sent out to notify your users (and your support teams!) of these changes. The complexity/impact/value of the change will inform to the type of communication that needs to be sent out and the frequency of these communications (the additional challenge is you don't know exactly when this change will be available to your users).
• what if any training is required for the users to maximise the benefits or minimise the impact of a new or changed service

Our IT Cloud Operating Model designs incorporate a Change Enablement function that is driven by knowledge management via the M365 Service Owner role. This set of activities drives the Application Lifecycle Management of Microsoft 365 products and services from the Public Roadmap, through the Message Centre, to the user Usage and Adoption analysis of the technology.

The Change Enablement function feeds into the creation of the internal Microsoft 365 roadmap that is managed by the IT organisation. Key steps in creating this include:

• alignment with the organisation's strategy and remembering to tie back technology to strategic business outcomes
• collation of user issues - focus on frustrations from technical perspective but it helps to get non-technical frustrations as well.
• the mapping of Microsoft 365 products and services to the identified problem areas
• creation of the internal Microsoft 365 roadmap
• definition of success metrics
• planning for change management - a strong user adoption or change management strategy will ensure sustainable success for your online services rollout

The application lifecycle management of Microsoft 365 products and services needs to be a blend of DevOps to deliver the products and services and ITIL processes and functions to ensure the quality of service. The internal roadmap informs and sets expectations as to how IT is going to support and enhance business processes based on their ability to understand user issues and map new and changes to existing services to remove user pain points and provide user gains.

Some of the benefits of this approach are:

• improved organisational agility
• better and faster decision making
• increase operational efficiency and user productivity
• improved business processes

IT organisations need to appreciate that moving to the cloud is not a 'one-time' project but requires continual management of the 'evergreen' environment and the internal road map 'sets out the IT stall' with regard to their commitment to supporting the organisation's strategy.