Any successful project begins by bringing together the right stakeholders: the individuals who have a "stake," or need to be involved in planning and execution. Ensure your upgrade project team includes Executive Sponsors representing Business and IT, as well as designated IT Pro, Admin and User Readiness leads.​

Taking time to define key project logistics including scope, business goals, success metrics, risks and timeline will help ensure all stakeholders are aligned and working towards the same priority outcomes.

The ideal upgrade approach addresses two critical planning areas: technical readiness and user acceptance.

​By confirming that your environment is set up for success with Teams, you help ensure consistent, high-quality experiences. Through the understanding of your user communities and designing the right readiness plan, you help facilitate the desired behavior change, accelerating adoption and increasing value realization for both users and the organization as a whole.

You have flexibility in how and when you upgrade your organization to Teams. By piloting Teams, running Skype and Teams together in your environment, and then moving users fully to Teams in a manner that best fits your use cases and goals, you ensure the best experience with minimal business disruption for users.

An operations strategy that includes regular network monitoring and user satisfaction measurement is the best way to ensure consistent quality experiences, sustained adoption growth, and maximum business value realization. Ongoing optimization of your environment will ensure you build upon your upgrade success and enable users to explore additional use cases in Teams.