1. Don’t move records if you can help it. Moving a bunch of manual records from our old spreadsheets and LMS gave us a quantifiable level of effort that we decided wasn’t worth it for full production.
2. Don’t oversell. Salespeople tend to say “yes” to capabilities that may not be quite as robust as your end users expect. You probably have pilot users who are under the impression (from salespeople or their own management) that the new system will solve all their problems. That rarely happens.
3. You will probably outgrow the built-in reports sooner than you expect.
4. I suggest you use something like Loom to create mini “help” videos as soon as possible, and incorporate those into an FAQ.  These will be much more helpful to some people than reading how to solve a problem.
5. Communicate progress continuously.  Send out helpful tips regularly.
6. Embrace the dissenters. Give them a voice in how they would solve a problem.  They can become valuable allies.

Test….test….test….test….

Did I say the word test?

Especially if you are using the system to deploy learning to people via groups / enrollment rules for this soft launch.

Enrollment rules need tuning up over time and may even need to be versioned into cycles for yourself as you see how people get put into their learning.

Learn the words. Thank you for your outreach and feedback.

Oh! If you are using Go1 content? And you are putting multiple modules into a course? You may want to keep a troubleshooting document on hand. The feedback I got was the shouting of the actual training material that a person is completed? Confuses people. They think they are done and can miss going over to the next training material.

Not sure you are following?
Look at this screenshot…

We have quickly learned that we need a getting started guide for new users. 

Despite everything was super intuitive and easy (in our opinion), ther were lots of questions about the basic stuff - how to navigate, how the content is organized, what are learning plans, what are channels, how to find past courses, certificates, etc.

We first started with a page of text and animated gifs, but then I created a dedicated course explaining all that, which is available directly from the home page and in the welcome email.

Similar to @alekwo  we built dedicated courses for how to navigate. One for general users, one for managers, one for instructors, one for Power Users. That was helpful.

As @dklinger said TEST. Everything that you possible can. Enrollment rules, different kinds of courses, SCORM vs AICC, email notifications, different browsers. ALLLLL the things. Seems like a lot, but little issues become big issues when the user base expands. Nothing quite like a course failure on go live (ask me how I know).

Give your pilot users an easy way to provide feedback. Consider making the feedback anonymous.

Thank you for the feedback! This is great stuff. Please keep it coming! I want to mark them all as “Best Answer!”

This is a great question! We just went live in November after about a 9 month implementation. I liken it to the theme song of The Facts of Life. You take the good, you take the bad, and there you have the facts of life. Similar to what others said above- system expectations vary by user. Some of those expectations are realistic and doable, and others are not. We came off of another system after 9 years, so it was engrained in our daily processes, and we have folks (internal and customers) that are still struggling with the change. (i.e. We want to see this calendar that has everything on it for everyone and these 25 data points). No matter how intuitive you make it, the buy-in and change management will go well beyond go-live.  

The former vendor was getting stagnant, and we saw opportunities with Docebo and that’s why we made the change. I’ve had  to remind my people that it’s going to feel stripped down, because it is. We didn’t spend 2 years working on this to keep the same system and give money to a different company, we want the new features, and that comes with losing other features. 

For soft launch, we had a Microsoft Planner board where folks could add cards, and as we worked on the issues or needed more info we could keep it all in the card. It was transparent for everyone and they could track the status of the card. This wouldn’t have to use Planner. It could be Trello, Jira, Asana, or any other card system like that. 

Use your Docebo resources. They’re there to help you along, so use them, but also don’t rely on them. You know your needs the best so be creative to get it to work. They may be able to give guidance or warning, but if you have the creativity and internal resources you might be able to pull it off. 

Plan ahead. You will miss something in the soft launch and you’ll need to pivot quick to fix/edit/blow up a process. Have an inner circle that can think quick, work quick, and communicate at the right times. 

Good luck!