When introducing Confluence to their organization, Project leaders and decision makers often fall into the trap of inefficient Confluence adoption, and expecting employees to use it at its full potential with no questions asked. This is based on the assumption that if the software is good, then we are all set. Well, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
A successful software implementation in general and Confluence in particular is a bit tricky. This is mainly due to the nature of Confluence. To implement a collaborative solution for daily use, decision makers must carefully research, plan. On one hand, decision makers need to consider employees’ daily routines, pain points, and willingness to change. On the other hand, they have to work on how to use Confluence to its full potential and guarantee consistent adoption and growth rates.
In this blog post, we will walk you through a couple of tips and best practices on how to drive Confluence adoption within your organization.
1. Understand your Teams’ Needs
Adopting a software solution often comes as a response for specific challenges and needs. In the case of Confluence, streamlining internal communications and fostering collaboration are the desired benefits. Although it might seem straightforward, successfully adopting Confluence closely depends on your existing tools and processes.
So here, it is important to study the technologies used by your teams as well as their specific processes.
The audit will help you understand your teams’ needs and particular habits, willingness to adopt Confluence and the shortcomes of existing solutions. The latter is crucial in helping you convince your teams to make the switch to Confluence.
2. Build Hype and Communicate the Launch
Now that you have an overall idea about your teams’ needs and have chosen Confluence as your next collaboration hub, the next step is to build hype and anticipation for the big day.
Build a communication plan to spread the word, establish key dates and convey the benefits of adopting Confluence to your teams.
You can start by sharing sneak peek videos and using blogs to demonstrate Confluence’s benefits in specific use cases. This will eventually help you generate hype and prepare your teams to get started on the right foot.
With this being said though, only conveying the benefits is often not enough to gain the trust of your teams. This brings us to the next point.
3. Involve your Teams from the Start and Encourage Free Trials
“I will believe it when I see it” is what most of your teams will tell you at the early stages. To effectively showcase the benefits of Confluence, you can involve a handful of individuals to be involved in the project from the get-go.
In addition to relaying timely feedback about the solutions already in use, Team representatives can contribute to the design and structure of Confluence. With a free trial, they can explore customization options.
Additionally, participating in the different phases of the project will keep your teams engaged and enhance their understanding of the benefits of Confluence.
4. Identify your Sponsors and Champions
When it comes to introducing new solutions in the workplace, adoption rates are more likely to be high if the project is backed by team leaders and decision makers. This is when early adopters and project sponsors come into play. C-suite executives and team leaders are ideal for the role, given their business knowledge, understand teams’ needs, and first-hand experience with the benefits of Confluence.
Champions can also help with structuring spaces, content creation, and start preparing for the next big step: Onboarding and training.
5. Provide Training and Continuous Support
In most cases, organizations initially adopt Confluence through communication campaigns and curiosity, but continuous adoption relies on tangible benefits and value. By tangible value we refer to the ability of Confluence to enhance the day-to-day of your teams. But how can we achieve this?
To answer this question we have to look at two aspects: Confluence as a platform and the way you have adopted it to meet your objectives. Ultimately, it’s your usage that determines its value.
First, help your teams get started with Confluence as a platform. Make sure to hold training sessions and consolidate information within a unified knowledge hub. This helps teams navigate Confluence and learn basic features like creating spaces, pages, and using built-in macros.
The next step is to create detailed guidelines and policies on the use of Confluence. With such documents you can explain the scope of work within Confluence, what content to post, who’s doing what, where to find resources, etc. This will guarantee that your teams get started on the right foot, remain actively informed and engaged.
6. Seek Feedback from End Users
With your teams now progressively adopting Confluence, you will have more insights on adoption, usage and engagement. Make sure to create dedicated spaces where your teams can share their experiences, feedback and brainstorm new ideas.
You can use existing Confluence features or dedicated Marketplace apps designed for feedback and idea management.
7. Track and Measure Success
As the saying goes: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. As you are introducing Confluence to your teams, make sure to keep an eye on specific KPIs and success criteria.
This will allow you to assess progress and identify areas of improvement. Insights such as daily active users, activation rates and time to activation give you the overall picture of your adoption. Moving forward, you can leverage Confluence analytics to measure page visits, likes, comments, shares, and more. Depending on the gathered insights you can make the right adjustments and properly plan for the long run.
Confluence adoption is by no means a one-off event. Driving adoption, usage, and engagement is a continuous process involving careful planning and input from multiple teams.
