Knowledge Pack: Office 365 Worst Practices

While working with hundreds of customers globally, I see lot of mistakes being done. This leads to poor ROI and business value. Best Practices get all the limelight. But mistakes are never documented publicly. Hence I am writing this series – Office 365 Worst Practices

Some mistakes are strategic, some technical, some operational. The worst practices article list is growing! Here is a list of all articles I have written on this topic so far. Future articles will also be added to keep this knowledge pack current. Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

This series started with a keynote in a CIO conference in India. The session was so well received that I decided to write about it in detail. Most CIOs said “We have already done these mistakes! Tell us how to come out of it”.

This series is not just a grim tale of mistakes. It provides practical solutions as well. More importantly, it also discusses the root cause of the mistakes – which can often be traced to psychology rather than technology.

List of Office 365 Worst Practices

1. Office 365 Worst Practices – Part 1 (a long list of worst practices)
2. Part 2 – Phased Release: Underutilization by Design!
3. Part 3 – Nobody is officially responsible for effective utilization
4. Part 4 – CXOs don’t understand its benefits
5. Part 5 – “We have not deployed OneDrive yet!”
6. Part 6 – Power BI tools not deployed / used
7. Part 7 – Inadequate efforts to drive adoption
8. Part 8 – Focus only on What’s New
9. Part 9 – Emotional attachment to Attachments!
10. Part 10 – No Focus on Office!
11. Part 11 – Pitfalls of O365 Consumption Measurement
12. Part 12 – Security Neglect
13. Part 13 – Teams creation blocked for users
14. Part 14 – Adoption and Change Management confusion

Best Practices are included

These articles are not just for highlighting wrong things. It explains the reason why those practices are bad and suggests better ways to mitigate the issues.

You can combine and customize these best practices and readjust your deployment and adoption plans.

The key things to remember are:

1. Have a long term plan. Don’t just focus on the launch.
2. Make sure the top management is sponsoring this project.
3. Provide education about all components at once to every target audience. Do not fragment the knowledge transfer or awareness creation for single products.