Previous Chapter: Part 8 - The Management
So what do you do when you have decided that SharePoint is for you? How do you get started? In this chapter I’ll try to provide an answer to those questions. But I have to issue a warning here. This is one view, an opinion that, although fueled by experience, might still not be the ideal way for you and your company or department. We won’t go into too much detail so the “solution” stays as generic as possible and therefore as widely applicable as possible.
Typically, since it is a server product, SharePoint is treated like other Microsoft server products. You install it, configure it and start working with it. Wrong! I can guarantee you that if you do this, after six months, you will have a very big SharePoint environment, but nobody will be able to work with it or find anything on it. No, what you should do it treat it as an application development and that starts with … analysis.
By Ronny Gabriels, Functional Analyst and ex-.net Solution Architect
Next chapter: Part 10 - The Conclusion (coming soon)
Analysis, really?
Yes really. Because the enormous possibilities that SharePoint has, it’s very easy to get lost in a forest of functionality and options. The first thing every department, that wants to use SharePoint, should do is think long and hard about what it is you want from SharePoint in your department. All the chapters before this one describe possibilities, but it’s very unlikely that you are going to be using all of them, certainly not at the start.
SharePoint’s success in your department will stand or fall with the simple fact whether the SharePoint solution is tailored to your department’s needs or not. Every department has its own way of working, its own way of communicating and its own way of collaborating. If you don’t calculate those in, your SharePoint is doomed from the get-go. However if all of that is taken into account your SharePoint solution can and will flourish within your department and will have a positive effect on everybody in that department. Don’t forget that SharePoint is not there to tell you how to work; it’s there to help you in the way you already work.
So get one of your analysts to start analyzing your SharePoint needs and possibilities or hire an external SharePoint analyst/consultant to do it for you. The latter has the advantage of being able to look at your department’s basic operations without bias or pretext. However, make sure the consultant has more or less the same point of view like the one described before, because if he is one of those “let’s just install it and see what happens” kind of guys, you will not like the outcome. Of course, I’m prejudice because I am one of those consultants and this is, as you might have guessed, my point of view. I’m not saying nothing else can work, but my advice will always be to be very careful not to spoil the product before it is even in use.
The result from this analysis work should be a well outlined SharePoint architecture based on the needs that you have today and taking into account the possibilities for expanding the functionalities without it “breaking” the architecture. This is vital. Make sure you have this architecture before you start installing SharePoint and later of course, stick to that architecture when implementing.
Ready to go
When you’re finally ready to start implementing your SharePoint solution, the key is “babysteps”. Don’t try to do everything at once. Start with some basic applications that will not only be easy to deploy and later upgrade, but also easy to use for your people. This way people can start working with it and gradually go deeper and deeper into the functionalities as you built bigger and more complex sites and applications.
If you read between the lines, you will have noticed that in my opinion a “big bang” roll-out is a bad idea. The key to the success is to get everybody working with it and the easiest way to do that is get them involved as soon as possible. Even basic functionality might be overwhelming at first, let alone having to start with the entire range of applications and functionalities at once.
So start basic and built sites and applications one by one. And of course release them as soon as they are done. It’s very easy to add functions or lists to a site later on, so why not get people working with it from day one.
Operational excellence
I will not go into too much detail on how you can make sure that everything runs smoothly and there isn’t an overwhelming load of operational management work to keep the SharePoint running. I will however give you two very basic tips to get you on your way to operational SharePoint excellence.
Site templates
Especially if you are working with project or team site a lot, make sure you have detailed templates for these sites. Making a template is easy and it saves you a great deal of work when a new team or project comes along. Make sure the layout is correct, that all the necessary lists are already there and have some basic security already present in the template. If a project comes along that has completely different needs than any other project so far, just prepare the project site (maybe base it on another project template and adapt) and then again, save it as a template. This way after a good year or so, you’ll have templates for all of your project types.
Requests for SharePoint IN SharePoint
Your operational staff will be getting a lot of requests concerning SharePoint. New sites, new access, change this, change that … the list goes on.
The best advice I can give is to actually have these requests made in a SharePoint application. InfoPath forms are ideal for this, but there are other possibilities. You can attach workflow to a request, prepare or fix everything in the same system and in the end even the operational staff is using SharePoint.
There are of course many other things you can do to smooth out the operational side of the SharePoint system. Most of them however are very strictly tied in to the procedures that your department and its operational staff use.
Conclusion
The conclusion here is a short one. Do the analysis of needs beforehand, start building in gradual steps and make sure everybody is on board as soon as possible. <commercial message> And of course, if you are in a jam, don’t be afraid to ask for outside help from an SharePoint analyst, consultant or expert. </commercial message>