Enterprise 2.0: Skip the Pilot

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Enterprise 2.0: Skip the Pilot

Michael Idinopulos August 27, 2009 - 6:51 PM

Get out your pitchforks, I'm about to commit Enterprise 2.0 heresy.

There's an orthodoxy in Enterprise 2.0 circles about how you're supposed to run an implementation. The orthodoxy goes something like this: Start with small-scale pilots, define your business objectives, watch the pilots closely, evaluate their success, make a go/no-go decision. (A good recent articulation of this view is in Chris McGrath's post on 8 Tips for a Successful Social Intranet Pilot .)

As far as I can tell it's what everyone thinks. In fact, it's what I used to think. Unfortunately, it's dead wrong. The orthodoxy is wrong for a very simple reason: Size matters. By constraining the size of your pilot, you significantly alter the way your company can and will use the tools.

I'm not opposed to pilots for most enterprise IT solutions. Companies like to pilot new technologies with small populations before they roll them out enterprise-wide. That approach makes a lot of sense for transactional systems like order management, project management, purchasing, ERP, and so on. By piloting with a small group, you reduce implementation risk. You get a read on the value of the solution, and you get feedback which you can use to make modifications while those modifications are still relatively easy and inexpensive.

But social software is different from traditional IT. Traditional IT enables individuals to carry out well-defined, highly standardized transactions. Users go into the system to process transactions--to transfer funds, purchase supplies, track ...

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http://www.socialtext.com/blog/2009/08/enterprise-20-skip-the-pilot.html

http://www.socialtext.com/blog/2009/08/enterprise-20-skip-the-pilot.html