Any business should embrace glitches when deploying a mobile app, an enterprise content management system, or a new mainframe system. Though it is not a foregone conclusion, it is common for these problems to surface. It could be employee resistance to change because they are afraid they couldn’t master the new technology efficiently or they can’t understand how the change can benefit them.
5 Steps to Ensure Successful App Deployment
Organizations can plan to avoid any deployment delays or complete failure. Today, we will closely examine five steps your organization can take to ensure successful adoption that can be adopted with the whole staff.
Set Clear & Quantifiable Objects
Before initiating the deployment process, divide the entire exercise into a series of measurable objectives or steps. Next, establish and define each step you and your organization need to deploy the new technology successfully. Of course, the nature of the new system will determine the objectives. Still, it must include a clear definition of crucial steps, the necessary actions in each step, methods of measuring the success of each step, and the validation of each step.
Create Milestones
The deployment process will likely have a significant and or negative effect on your organization’s daily operations. Unfortunately, that is common when undertaking a substantial company-wide change. And to avert some of the crises, consider deploying the change in stages. This way, you can make changes on a smaller scale and ease that transition and employees’ stress. For example, if your organization has offices in multiple places, consider deploying in one location as a beta.
You can deploy some modules independently or choose to deploy certain modules to one division for beta testing before deploying the technology to the whole organization. For example, deploy an inventory module to the sales division before releasing it to the accounting department or deploy ECMS to the marketing department before releasing it to the customer service division. Then, as an organization, test different programs in-house before linking them to your official website.
A milestone is when a deployment stage is completed. Milestones include specific, quantifiable objectives which may or may not be completed successfully. These objectives may include cleaning up the legacy data, finishing initial stipulations, obtaining user feedback, testing data integrity between new and old systems, or completing employee training.
Train Employees on the New System
One thing that is sure to derail the adoption of new technology is the employees who have no clue why or how to use the technology. If your employees don’t know how to use the new technology, embrace frustration, stress, and hostility towards the technology. It is easy for employees to lose morale when a company adopts change.
They may feel insecure because they can’t use technology to the company’s advantage. Others may completely fail to grasp the importance of technology to the organization. That is why training should come first before deploying the new technology.
At the end of the training, employees should be able to use new technology efficiently. To put employees in a better position to learn about the new technology, start by firing up their enthusiasm by explaining the reason and importance of the change and how each one will benefit from the adjustment. Employees need to be assured that they will be sufficiently trained to gain maximum benefit from the new technology.
Be open to them about the disadvantages and tell them it is inevitable for issues to arise, but the organization is well placed to deal with any glitches. The training should also include using certain deployment tools such as Octopus Deploy and Google Cloud Deployment Manager. Lastly, keep your promises and ensure everyone is well-trained and ready for deployment.
Establish an Ongoing Support System
Most of the time, new technology is adopted; organizations tend to give employees rudimentary training that leaves them exposed when the time to use new technology comes. For the sake of completion and the risk of being left behind, an organization should implement a training program for employees even after deployment.
Ongoing support to employees will play a huge part in business market adaptation. In the current world, where technologies can become obsolete in just a few months, employees need ongoing support. Besides technological evolvement, no technology, no matter how current it is, is completely “unbreakable.” Malicious people will always find a way to corrupt your data file or GUI. It would be best to prepare your staff to handle such eventualities effectively.
Adopt a Technology Partner if Necessary
A trusted technology partner may be necessary to deploy new technology effectively. The technology partner can help you train employees and outline and measure objectives. Several deployment tool providers offer this kind of assistance, and it might not be a bad idea if you contact one of them. Establish a healthy relationship with a prospective partner after discovering they are suitable and could contribute significantly to your deployment project. Don’t wait until the deployment process runs into a wall to start looking for outside assistance, which may lead to delays. Even if you are confident nothing will go wrong, it is still a good idea to have a partner just in case of any misfortunes.
Conclusion
It is rare for a deployment process to end without any problems, but this shouldn’t cause panic. Preparation is king when it comes to adopting new technology. In addition, your team should have a clear growth strategy beyond the deployment project.
This is only one of the few guarantees of successful deployment. The staff must have a greater initiative or a significant role in the project. New technology tends to be successfully adopted if it proves to have a huge effect on the company’s future and employees. Your organization should consider containerization, clouds, and serverless technologies.
