A couple of recent articles on user adoption caught my attention:

• Six Counterintuitive Truths … Scott from Yakabod shared his views on the adoption strategy for enterprise 2.0 implementations. “Ten years of knowledge sharing deployments convince me that the rules are different for E2.0. Transactional system benchmarks just don’t work, but we keep applying them to collaborative situations anyway. When you think about it, it doesn’t make sense. Consider the “truths” for traditional back-office deployments: get everything right before you go live. Mandate a cutover date and turn off the old system. Calculate ROI by increases or decreases in anything tangible — widgets, hours, paperwork. None of that stuff applies to E2.0 environments. In my experience, six counterintuitive principles work better.” His six include (1) launch before you are comfortable, (2) training discourages adoption, and (4) impossible deadlines work best. More
• “Pushing” Enterprise 2.0? … Hutch from Spigit comments on recent blog posts about user adoption for enterprise 2.0 implementations, how adoption is “about transforming human behaviors at work – More folks are starting to recognize that it is not trivial to bring communities and other social environments to life” (Rawn Shah, IBM). He then provides a decision framework that combines pushing and pulling approaches to adoption. More
• The Role of Culture … Joe from Cisco reflects on the role of culture in the adoption process, and argues that incorporating collaboration technology into the “way we work” is a bigger lever. “If you lead with culture, you present an “us vs. them” atmosphere that will naturally drive a large number of people away. However, business data and business processes are unifying forces within the enterprise. By putting your new collaboration tools in the context of a business process or objective business measure, you can drive adoption across the entire spectrum of employees.” More

For more, see User Adoption Strategies (the book).