But don't overestimate your users. Most office workers are familiar with Word and Excel, but ask for anything more than that from them, and you're going to have to invest time and money in training.
We realised early on that the amount of training we were offering was nowhere near enough to allow most users to use SP effectively. And in almost all cases, the users hated the system (and avoided using it) until they understood it properly. Catch 22 then. You have to invest that time in order to make the implementation successful.
To give you an idea of how much training we offer:
- When someone new starts at the organisation, they have to do a 3 hour SP training session.
- We then offer a further 2 hour session for people to become a bit more advanced.
- Finally we offer two 2 hour sessions for people who will become Site Owners (those who are responsible for maintaining and updating their team workspace)
To a Project team starting out with a SP implementation, this seems like an awful lot of training for something that they themselves may have picked up very quickly. Believe me, it's not an overestimate, unless you're lucky enough to be implementing SP in an organisation which deals with technology and where your staff are all IT geeks!
We do all our training internally, but there are companies which offer training courses aimed at every level of SP use from User up to Developer. The only one I have experience of is Combined Knowledge, but there are loads out there.
I personally think the cost is justified to make sure your Project Team is completely at one with SP, but if you were going to send all your users on an external course, the cost would likely be prohibitive. Better to employ a trainer for 6 months, a year, 18 months, whatever you think, as they can then support users on-site and make sure that people really are using it properly.
In short, plan for a certain amount of training per person, then double it!!
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