Adoption Operating Conditions

Most organisations sit somewhere between project and product.

A health check tells you what is happening to one product. Whether you can act on it — and keep acting on it after the report is filed — depends on how your organisation is set up to run products at all.

Seven dimensions, each a spectrum rather than a box to tick. The point is not a grade. It is that all seven become discussable, and that the choices you make about them become deliberate instead of inherited.

Who it is for

The leader who can change how digital products are funded, owned, governed and staffed — a portfolio leader, Head of Product, transformation leader, CIO or CDO.

Who often starts it

Product managers and product owners, who live with these conditions and can rarely change them alone. They take part; the decision sits with someone who can act on what it finds.

The seven dimensions

Nobody is at one end.

Every organisation runs some things closer to project thinking and some closer to product thinking — and rarely for a reason anyone chose. The assessment reads all seven, one at a time.

Scope & Purpose

Ownership & Accountability

Success Metrics

Ways of Working

Team Structure & Longevity

Funding Model

Risk & Adaptability

Each one runs from project thinking to product thinking. The reading is where you sit on each — not whether you pass.

The diagnostic core

One survey sits underneath both packages.

The same seven statements, answered independently by the people who run your products and the people who fund and govern them. You get a reading on each dimension — and often the most useful finding is not the level, but how far apart your own people are. Disagreement about where you stand is itself a condition worth knowing about.

Those who run the products

Product managers, product owners and the nearest delivery roles.

Those who fund and govern them

Portfolio leaders, Heads of Product, transformation leaders, CIOs and CDOs.

Two ways to run it

Read it together, or work it through in a day.

Same survey, same analysis. What differs is how the reading is handed over — and whether the day that turns it into priorities is part of what you buy.

Package one · Assessment

Everyone answers, then we read it together

The survey, the analysis, and a session where we go through the reading with your people rather than sending it to them. It is interpretation, not a handover: it does not work without the people whose answers it is.

The engagement runs: the survey → the analysis → a facilitated results session.

What you receive

A reading on each of the seven dimensions, including the spread across your own answers.
A shared picture of where you actually stand — and a baseline a later run can be held against.

Package two · Assessment + Action Workshop

The seven, worked through in a room

The same survey and the same analysis. Here the results are not a separate session: presenting them is the first part of a one-day Action Workshop, and the rest of the day turns the reading into something the organisation has decided to do.

The day runs: the results → a shared as-is → a prioritised to-be → How Might We questions → an impact/effort matrix → next steps the sponsor stands behind.

What you receive

The same reading and baseline as package one.
A shared as-is and a prioritised to-be.
How Might We questions, prioritised in an impact/effort matrix — the matrix is what forces a choice.
Next steps with a sponsor behind them, rather than a list nobody owns.

They are alternatives, not steps — you choose one, and neither is a down payment on the other. The difference in what you receive is the difference between a shared reading and a decided list.

What it takes

Two to three weeks, either way.

The survey window is deliberately short: it is the part that decides whether this stays a few weeks or turns into a quarter.

Survey window

10 calendar days as standard. Seven at the shortest.

Analysis

Three to five working days after the survey closes.

Whole engagement

Two to three weeks — for both packages.

Results session (package one)

Typically two hours, facilitated.

Action Workshop (package two)

Normally one day, results first.

Survey respondents

Typically 6 to 20, across both groups — who exactly, we agree with you.

Workshop participants

Typically 6 to 12, not counting the facilitator — normally the same two groups in one room.

Larger groups

Possible, and sometimes right — but analysis, facilitation, reporting and scope all have to be adapted. It is not the same engagement at a different size.

What this is not

Not a grade, and not an entrance exam. There is no score to pass.
Not a product diagnosis. This reads how your organisation is set up to run products — not whether one particular product is delivering the value it was implemented for. That is the adoption health check, and the two can be bought separately.
Not a change programme. At its furthest — the Action Workshop — it ends at prioritised actions with a sponsor behind them. Carrying them out is yours.
Not an external benchmark. We do not compare you against other organisations — only against your own answers, and later your own baseline.
Not proof of effect. It gives you a baseline and a shared reading; the workshop adds priorities on top. Whether anything moved is what a later run can show you — not something anyone can promise up front.

Later, if you want it

The survey can be run again and read against the first one.

A follow-up assessment holds the new reading against the baseline, so you can follow movement over time. It is optional — and it exists only because the first run left you a baseline.

Where the seven come from

Before there was an instrument, there was a finding. Across three enterprises — 1,500 to 60,000 employees, systems live for more than a year — managers described taking almost no action to manage adoption after go-live, and explained why.

The study named the pattern project thinking, and showed how it holds itself in place: the beliefs excuse the inaction, and the inaction leaves the beliefs unchallenged.

The seven dimensions are how we made that pattern assessable.

“Usage is adoption.” “No usage, no job.” “No news is good news.”

Falch & Krancher, Why Managers Don’t Manage: An Interpretive Case Study of Information Systems Adoption Management, HICSS 2024.

Since then the method has been designed and run in two large organisations, as part of research and transformation work. This is the first time we offer it as a service.

Start here

Getting started is a conversation, and it costs nothing.

Both packages leave you standing on the same thing: a reading of where your organisation actually sits on all seven, and where your own people see it differently. Only the Action Workshop turns that into prioritised next steps with a sponsor behind them — the assessment on its own leaves the deciding to you.

Tell us how products are run and funded where you are, and who would need to be in the room. We will say honestly whether the seven conditions are the right place to look — or whether a single product is.

Talk to us about the seven conditions See how the capability is built

Or write to info@evonate.dk