My 'Teams First' Strategy
Simplify collaboration with my ‘Teams First’ strategy.
In this post I’m going to talk about something I call my ‘Teams First’ strategy.
This is for leaders, service owners and decision makers in any organisation, and it addresses a question I hear all the time, and that’s:
What Microsoft app should I use to get my work done?
Why do people ask that? Because there are a lot of apps and services in Microsoft 365, and choosing one to complete your task is not always a straight-forward decision.
I see a lot of comments on my YouTube channel from people that have this trouble, and some from people who are frustrated that Microsoft keeps releasing new apps and features that seem to do the same thing, or at least have a lot of overlap.
When I’m coaching my business customers, they want to know how to create a strategy for using Microsoft 365, and then to explain it in a way that everyone in their organisation can understand.
For that reason, I’ve been developing the ‘Teams First’ strategy, and in this post, I’m going to explain what it is and how you can use it to boost adoption of Microsoft 365 in your own organisation.
What is the ‘Teams First’ strategy?
The core idea behind the Teams First strategy is simple:
If you have to decide what app you should use to complete a task, always go to Microsoft Teams first.
Let's consider an example: Sharing a file.
Sharing a file is something you do all the time. If you follow the 'Teams First' strategy, then when you need to share a file you should choose to do that in Teams.
There are other Microsoft apps you could use to share that file, like OneDrive, SharePoint or even Outlook. But choosing Teams is best for your organisation because:
- Teams is optimised for collaboration.
- It’s easy to teach how to share a file in Teams.
What the ‘Teams First’ strategy does is simplify the decision-making process. It aims to eliminate as many options as it can. And that’s what I find my customers struggle with.
Having Microsoft Teams as first choice makes it easier to decide how to move forward and get things done. And that scales from one person to an organisation.
But now let me expand on this and show you why choosing ‘Teams First’ is a practical and sustainable option.
1. Teams is Optimised for Collaboration
Most of the tasks that your organisation does to collaborate can be done in Teams.
Microsoft has invested massively in the communication features of teams in the last year to respond to the surge in remote working and to catch up with its main competitor Zoom. So for meetings, webinars, calling and chatting, Teams is a good choice now.
And when it comes to collaboration, whether it’s creating and sharing files, managing tasks, posting news, or promoting an event, it can now all be done in Teams.
New collaboration features are being added to Teams all the time. So things like approval workflows that previously had to be done in SharePoint, can now all be created and managed in Teams.
2. Teams is key to Microsoft’s Strategy
Another good reason to choose Teams First is Microsoft’s continued investment in Teams.
If you’re already a Microsoft 365 customer, you’ll notice the rate of updates to the Teams app far outweighs everything else. Microsoft is betting its future on Teams.
We can never be 100% sure about what the future of collaboration will look like, but for the medium term we can assume Teams is going to play a large part in Microsoft’s strategy.
3. 'Teams First' can simplify Training
Choosing Teams First is a practice that you can adopt and share with the rest of your organisation.
When Teams is promoted as your go-to app, you'll have one app to teach people how to use, reducing the amount of training that you have to create and share.
You can take a task, figure out how to do it in Teams, and then make that the ‘way it’s done’ in your org.
It flattens the learning curve and makes the task easier to adopt.
4. No Device Gets Left Behind
Teams can be used on any device, including Windows, Mac and Linux on desktop and iOS, iPadOS and Android. Choosing Teams First means that there is one app to install and configure.
That simplifies your life and helps your organisation's IT team to roll out support of a single app.
5. It Simplifies Migration
The Teams First strategy helps when you’re migrating your files from your file shares or cloud services like Dropbox.
You can migrate your files as you want them to be seen in Teams.
This will dictate what Teams you need to set up, and what channels they should have.
Each channel has its own folder in SharePoint, so you can target those folders when you migrate the files. This constrains and simplifies the migration process.
6. You can Integrate your Intranet
If you’ve invested a lot of effort in your SharePoint intranet, you can use the new Viva Connections features to integrate your intranet with Teams.
This allows you to access your intranet straight out of Teams!
It shows up on the left hand rail as an app and you can use it without having to leave Teams and open a browser.
7. The Fear of SharePoint
And finally, feedback from a lot of my customers is that these days most people are comfortable using Teams with some training.
During the pandemic, we switched to remote work and people were forced to adopt it quickly. People became familiar with Teams in varying degres. And some even liked it ;)
Not so much for SharePoint. More people aren’t sure about it. They don’t know what it’s for or how to use it.
There is often a fear of using unknown apps. They can create barriers, hampering adoption.
Choosing Teams first minimises this type of resistance when you’re trying help your organisation adopt Microsoft 365.
Caveats
There will always be things that you can think of that Teams can’t do. There’ll be scenarios and requirements that Teams just wasn't designed for.
I’m not saying you must only use Teams.
I’m saying that for most of the collaboration and communication tasks you do, you should choose Teams First.
If you find that Teams can’t do what you want, then you can fall back to another app that is a better fit for the job.
Summary
To sum up, the Teams First strategy:
- Answers the question; which app should I use?
- Help leaders decide how to support Microsoft 365 adoption in their organisation
- Makes tasks and processes easier to learn and share
- Minimises the fear of unknown apps, ways of working and resistance to change