Microsoft 365 Copilot At Work

CHAPTER 5Planning Your Microsoft 365 Copilot Rollout

One of the most challenging aspects of rolling out any technology project is planning for how people will be impacted by the change. In some ways, deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot within your organization is the same as other large technology projects, but in other ways it is even more challenging given the hype and newness of GenAI.

This chapter covers planning your Microsoft 365 Copilot implementation—including project management, change management, and technical enablement—and then planning for extensibility (which will also be covered later in this book).

Planning your Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout is an exciting yet critical step in your journey to help transform how people within your organization work. If you are not mindful in your up-front planning, your project could experience hiccups as employees might only casually tinker with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Even worse, your project might end up falling flat due to unmanaged expectations for how impactful Microsoft 365 Copilot is while it continues to mature as a product. When rolling out Microsoft 365 Copilot as part of the Early Access program, there was a direct correlation between adoption and up-front change management planning. Employees who were onboarded as part of our “boarding group program” received immediate training, were a part of a peer group to learn and share with, and were given examples of role-specific use cases. These employees were more adept at modifying ...