Standing up a Microsoft 365 tenant takes an afternoon. Rolling it out to a university without breaking mail flow, confusing staff or leaking data takes a plan.
The sequence matters: secure the tenant first (MFA, conditional access and a recovery path), then fix identity and domains before touching mail. Staged user onboarding with training at each wave beats a big-bang cutover, because adoption — not licensing — is what determines whether the project actually lands.
Done properly, M365 becomes the collaboration layer an institution builds on for a decade: secure, governed and actually used.
