Introduction to the Microsoft service adoption framework and Specialist role

  • 9 minutes

Welcome to Microsoft Service Adoption Specialist training! This training is for professionals who are accountable for or learning how to drive the adoption of Microsoft services in their organization. We'll help you learn the essential skills required to craft and execute a service adoption plan. This course is appropriate for business leaders, IT professionals, change managers, or others interested in maximizing their value from technology in their business.

This course uses the implementation of Microsoft Teams as our example service. The service adoption framework is designed to apply to any service you need to implement. However, there's some information, such as the technical acumen section, that's specific to Microsoft Teams. All the information you need to complete this training is contained in this course. If you'd like to go deeper in the technical implementation of Microsoft Teams, check out Manage team collaboration with Microsoft Teams.

You'll learn about the following areas:

  • The six essential knowledge areas for driving service adoption
  • Recommended strategies and actions for:
    • Stakeholder management
    • Project planning
    • Governance decision making
    • Feedback methods
    • Service awareness
    • Service health

Before, during, and after you complete this course, we invite you to join a community of new and seasoned service adoption and business leaders driving change at the Microsoft Teamwork Champion program.

What are your goals for this course?

Service Adoption Specialists (SAS) come from many backgrounds. You may have various goals in completing this course. We'd like to suggest the following goals, based on our knowledge of the industry and the outcomes that are required for success. Feel free to add or remove goals depending on your career stage, job title and accountabilities, and interests.

  • Learn the basic tenets of successful service adoption.
  • Supplement your existing technical or organizational change knowledge.
  • Validate your knowledge with an industry recognized certification.
  • Expand your career options with service adoption skills.
  • Find a community of people that are both knowledgeable and interested in this topic.

Read before proceeding - our assumptions

We use certain examples and data points during this training. This helps standardize the knowledge check questions and provides you a successful learning experience. These are our assumptions:

  • Your project is to implement Microsoft Teams, which has the required complexity to demonstrate the service adoption framework. Moving to Microsoft Teams is also top of mind for many organizations, making the training a relevant asset for your own career growth.
  • Your organization has five regional offices:
    • Three in the United States: Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York
    • One in London, England
    • One in Mexico City, Mexico
  • Your company, called "Contoso," has 3,500 employees, is privately held, and has been in business for over 15 years.
  • You support the sales staff, who are regionally located, work both from home (instead of on your corporate campus) and at customer sites.
  • Your company produces a product and delivers services that support that product. Recently your company has been under competitive pressure from new start-ups that threaten your hold on your market share.
  • Your company uses Microsoft technology but has many other types of software and services from a variety of vendors. This includes consumer applications like What's App or simple SMS texting, commonly referred to as "shadow IT." This is especially common with your remote sales staff.
  • You don't have a large IT or training staff. Budgets in the IT department have been under financial pressure. Everyone is asked to "do more with less."

Reference material

Although, this training is designed as a standalone experience, there are additional readings that can help not only with this experience but in the overall development of your service adoption skills.

Optional

Join the community of Microsoft 365 Champions and Adoption Specialists to share your experience and learn from others who are driving adoption of cloud services.