Don't Drop the Pilot

Andrew McAfee recently blogged (http://bit.ly/d3tbHE) that companies moving forward with E2.0 solutions should skip the pilot and go straight to an enterprise-wide solution.  While I agree with much of what he says in the body of his argument (which boils down to some people run pilots for the wrong reasons) I don't agree that dropping the pilot stage altogether is always the right answer.

But, he's Andrew McAfee.  How could I possible disagree with him publicly and not have the wrath of the E2.0 glitterati hordes descend on me?  Will people think I'm stupid?  Finally I decided I'm getting to be an old broad and I just don't care.  Plus, I just wrote a whitepaper called "Running a successful Enterprise 2.0 Pilot" that was in the process of being prettied up.  So I went ahead and commented on his blog.  I am probably the only one who made a big deal out of this.  Anyway, here are the comments I placed on his blog post:

"Don’t drop the pilot just make sure you are running it for the right reasons.  At NewsGator I have worked on 30+ pilots with F500 customers across multiple verticals and some truths hold steady no matter the organization.  When a customer enters into a narrow-scope pilot to prove adoption, ROI, or business results they will fail.  On that point I completely agree.  Where I disagree is that companies should drop the pilot all together.  There are two purposes for a pilot that can be important:  proving the technology within their IT infrastructure and learning some lessons about their users and themselves.

NewsGator has come into some organizations after other vendors have failed strictly from a technology perspective.  Every organization’s IT infrastructure has its quirks and not a single one is exactly like another.  Running a short technology-focused pilot can help identify potential issues ahead of time that can then potentially be addressed (or you find another vendor).

The second reason for a pilot is to make some mistakes and learn some lessons with a small subset of your users. During the course of a small pilot you’d be surprised what you can learn, especially by making mistakes.  I’m not suggesting that mistakes should be made on purpose, but at the end of the pilot, survey the participants and find out what went well, what didn’t, and study the system-generated metrics.  From that data you can learn how to best communicate, educate, and deliver value, not to mention which tools in your arsenal you may want to roll out first.

So Mr. McAfee, I agree with your points while I disagree with your call to action.  Organizations should run their pilots but do it for the right reasons.  If they are interested in how to run an effective E2.0 pilot they can check out my whitepaper at http://bit.ly/9dk1zk. "

So tell me, do you think I'm stupid?  No wait, I don't want to know. :)

Comments

[Michael Brown]

Far from it Christy :)

Here's the way i see it...
McAfee may be a 'guru', but he's also not stupid! If companies - especially large ones - screw up their deployments of E2.0 because they didn't think through all the issues that typically come out during pilot, there's CONSULTING WORK in there for someone ;) !!!

[Linda]

I am in the middle of an E2.0 "pilot" and I am most definitely learning from mistakes and how to tweak the rollout so it's most valuable for users.

[formula 21]

I am in the middle of an E2.0 "pilot" and I am most definitely learning from mistakes and how to tweak the rollout so it's most valuable for users.

[monster beats studio]

Far from it Christy :)

Here's the way i see it...
McAfee may be a 'guru', but he's also not stupid! If companies - especially large ones - screw up their deployments of E2.0 because they didn't think through all the issues that typically come out during pilot, there's CONSULTING WORK in there for someone ;) !!!