Rollout Readiness
On to the Next Platform
Year
2024
Type of Project
Training & Upskilling
My Role
Lead Technical Director, Accenture
Objective
Microsoft was planning massive updates to its large meeting platform, as well as the launch of many new features being labeled under its new Premium tier.
I needed to validate Microsoft Teams Town Hall for enterprise use within our company, see how we could best utilize the new Premium features, and then prepare my team to confidently run events in that platform.
Process
In the months prior, our company had gotten early access to using Microsoft Teams Town Hall. This gave me the access to compare Town Hall to its predecessor, Teams Live Events, to see what was new with Town Hall or what it was lacking. During this time, I partnered with Microsoft through my company to provide real-world input as to whether certain features be implemented or tweaked. We also tested new features based on these conversations as they later appeared in future product updates.
I later took what I had learned through that first process to build a training curriculum that would adequately upskill the rest of my technical directing and producing team.
I then shared all of this knowledge through a series of global trainings I hosted live, with timings for each session adjusted to respect coworkers across all the regions we operate in.
Follow-ups were conducted by way of refresher sessions I hosted later, as well as open 'office hours' where the team could jump on and ask any questions they had.
Outcome
The company's directing and producing teams across the US, BA, Prague, and India were able to successfully create and operate Teams Town Hall events and meetings with Premium features on their own.
This reduced escalations to our incident reporting team, allowed for faster setup and fewer last-minute surprises, and positioned our team to be more than ready to execute before Teams Town Hall had been officially launched.