Drop in office hours for engagement and change management
Asked by Lisa Yeager:

We are using Jira and the Atlassian ecosystem to drive capacity and workload management and planning across approximately 200 users with very different levels of system experience and understanding. These are not software development teams, rather, that are focused on statistical analysis for clinical trials.

To support rollout and adoption, we are planning to convene regular, drop-in office hour sessions for all users. Has anyone else tried this approach in a similar context and if so, what worked well and what were your lessons learned?


Answers:
author: Alex Ortiz
body: I've done a few hours before. . and folks tend to be a little shy.

You may want to have some pre-determined questions. Maybe folks can email them in before, or submit them somewhere else. This is just to get the conversation. Once you are in a good flow, folks start opening up. But those first few 5-10 minutes can be quiet at the beginning.

comments: author: Alex Ortiz
body: I would also suggest having dedicated sessions, maybe 30 minutes, where you demonstrate some capability and then leave time for Q/A.


author: Lisa Yeager
body: Thanks, Alex. Yes - definitely anticipate some shy folks here. Especially since we have quite varying levels of experience with the toolset.


author: Aaron Geister
body: [@Lisa Yeager](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5374810)   

First want to say welcome to the community. Hope you find all the answers you need.   

I have used the open office hours method many times and or a lunch and learn with Q\&A. I think this is not only beneficial for a team, but it is revolutionary. No system is just automatically learned.   

What works well for me is to have Jira on a screen and showing the teams how we want the system to work for us. Then allow to ask questions.   
Setting an outline of what you will cover is helpful too.  

Please go forward and do this and then iterate on the possibilities and feedback you get from it.  

Respectfully,   

Aaron

comments: author: Lisa Yeager
body: Thanks, Aaron - we've had lunch and learns and a couple drop in help sessions that have had mixed success. How long did you run your office hours (eg weekly for an hour for 3 months)?

We are doing a very structured paired testing process with the users who are helping to configure and test the system, and trying to figure out the best timing to offer drop ins, particularly since we want to provide transparency about the work that is happening...but not take a good deal of time away from the configuration effort.


author: MattD
body: I helped run office hours twice a week for an hour each time. If people turned up, we helped them. But If not, we got on with something else. Sometimes people would tell us they were going to turn up, sometimes not. It was a real high point of how we provided Atlassian tools to a large organization. We made good contacts in a huge range of departments and really got a sense of what users wanted.

We also had a substantial set of documents ready to refer people to for the most common questions, which helped us handle up to 5 or 6 people in each hour. People loved having a time to just ask their questions in a personal way. Thoroughly recommend it!

comments: author: Lisa Yeager
body: Thanks, Matt! Was your audience in the same size range as ours? And did you just take folks' questions in the order that they arrived, or did you have the ability to offer breakout/parallel conversations (esp if these were virtual)

-L


Tags: cloud

jira-cloud