Tags | Engagement |

This documentation is for Stack Overflow Enterprise. Free, Basic, and Business users can access their documentation here. Find your plan.

Overview

You’ve implemented Stack Overflow Enterprise and rolled it out to your entire organization. Now it’s on to the next stage - Adoption and Use. How do you keep up the momentum post-launch?

NOTE: we use the generic word "community" in this article, not to be confused with Stack Overflow's Communities feature.

What’s in it for me?

This is the question most often asked when introducing a new idea or method where the benefits are not immediately obvious. Developers will adopt and use a platform if they can get work done more efficiently and effectively. But how do you communicate the business benefits to both your developer and business management teams? Below are a few key talking points about Stack Overflow Enterprise for you to keep in mind as you are developing and implementing your adoption strategy.

Stack Overflow Enterprise helps you work out loud by:

Breaking down silos
- centralizing communication, increasing collaboration
Strengthening culture, community
- Information is accessible regardless of location and work schedule
- Increases employee engagement, builds community, increases sentiment
Increasing accountability
- Improves visibility, transparency, motivation (people see what you are working on)
- Allows feedback (good and bad) leading to better product at a more granular level
Sharing tribal knowledge
- Product discussions take place in an open environment
- Best Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) can weigh in on the conversation rather than limiting to a group within an email thread
- Answers live on as a knowledge repository

Execute an adoption strategy

The key to a successful roll-out is first understanding your current environment, leadership support, and overall enterprise readiness. While each organization is different, there are some common practices that can help make any platform successful. Below are some high-level strategies and tactics you can implement to help drive adoption.

Stage: Prepare

Strategy	Tactics
Develop Platform Plan	Plan Management Support Prepare use cases Identify challenges / solutions Conduct Empathy Interviews Form Governance Committee Identify Community Manager(s)
Define Architecture	Configure Beta Pilot

Stage: Rollout

Strategy	Tactics
Develop Communications & Marketing Plan Communicate Policies Create Awareness Encourage "culture" of collaboration	Obtain Senior Management support Develop Senior Leadership "Playbook" to define policies and consistent message Target influencers / team owners Identify marketing opportunities: newsletters, signage, video, podcasts, swag, etc Use email signatures with message/link to Stack Overflow Engage Enterprise Communication Teams, Platforms, email distributions, etc. Identify relevant communications to drive conversations to Stack Overflow Recruit champions to be ambassadors
Create Training Plan Communicate Help Materials	Write and distribute "How-To" articles Create Printables/Cheat Sheets Conduct hands-on training/workshops Conduct demos in team meetings

Stage: Monitor & Grow

Strategy	Tactics
Develop Best Practices Listen, monitor, and analyze usage	Establish monitoring/response cadence Identify current & emerging Subject Matter Experts Develop/maintain use cases Establish key reporting metrics and audiences Develop regular communications schedule
Act on Usage Trends Do continuous improvement	Evaluate communication plan effectiveness and course-correct as needed Recognize power users & top contributors Communicate successes, key metrics, achievements, and trends

Stage: Integrate

Strategy	Tactics
Capture Feedback	Validate use case data Integrate with other platforms/applications Contribute to product & feature backlogs

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