Kevin Hughes: Posts http://www.sharepointkevin.com/Lists/Posts/AllPosts.aspx RSS feed for the Posts list. 2009 Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:20:16 GMT Microsoft SharePoint Foundation RSS Generator 60 en-US Kevin Hughes: Posts http://www.sharepointkevin.com/_layouts/images/siteIcon.png http://www.sharepointkevin.com/Lists/Posts/AllPosts.aspx SharePoint Popularity Grows in Uncontrolled Ways http://www.sharepointkevin.com/Lists/Posts/ViewPost.aspx?ID=42 Body:

I have been inspired by research done by the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) that indicates the large growth of SharePoint as a platform of choice for businesses of all sizes but that this growth is being done with without formal business plans or governance. Having been working with SharePoint for a decade (among other technologies and platforms) as both a consultant and an employee part of IT staff in businesses of all different sizes, I think I have some insight into the reasons behind this.

The first is the SharePoint product itself. It is HUGE! It is so capable of filling so many roles within an organization that it can’t easily be pigeon-holed into categories. Managers and Executives cannot easily point to any particular sales material and call SharePoint just a database platform or just a web site technology or just an ECM platform or just anything else. It crosses bounds. But, it also doesn’t do much out of the box. It, like most true platforms (as opposed to applications) is a framework used to build solutions. Oh, it has web sites and some collaborative tools that are easily created. But, OOB, even they won’t do much for a business.
 
So, the ease of basic deployment of the platform and basic collaborative functionality leads many IT Pros and managers into a false sense of having a clue. SharePoint won’t solve any business problems by itself. It must be designed, configured, tested and deployed. And that takes people specifically skilled in the platform. But, they can’t begin to get started until the business knows what it needs – what problems need to be solved. And most businesses don’t know that…at least not in writing.
 
Think of building a house. You buy land, you have a number to a lumber yard that will supply you with all the materials you wish to build your house. You call a construction company and pay them to build the house. You want the house done in 30 days, so they better get started. So they get to your land with all their tools, trucks and people. Now, at this point, any construction foreman worth his paycheck would have everyone stop where they are and do absolutely nothing. You tell them that if it isn’t done by your deadline they will be fired – that should get them motivated. They are professionals (we will assume) so they still do not move. They don’t pick up a single hammer or piece of wood. Why? No blueprints. No architect drawings. No plans.
 
They have no idea what to build. They don’t know what you want except that you want a house. How big? How many rooms? Where do you want the rooms? How many floors? Basement? How many windows and doors? What kind of roof? What kind of heating/cooling? Where will the plumbing and other utilities be run? What kind of insulation? What materials will make up the walls, floors, ceilings? Which direction will the front door face? What kind of lighting do you want? Room for a laundry? Fireplaces? Built-in book cases? Laundry chutes? Copper pipes or PVC? Garage – how big? Attached? Room above?
 
Do you get the idea? No one in their right mind would start building a house, where their family’s health and well-being will be centered, without plans.
 
But, businesses do it every day for things that are so fundamentally important to their business’s health and well-being. They buy software, such as SharePoint, buy servers, get one or two people trained or hired and say, “Build me SharePoint.” But…what do they want built? It won’t matter how many incentives, good or bad, you give for building SharePoint if your IT Pros don’t know what to build. So, many businesses are turning to outside consultants, such as the company for which I work. This is great for my paycheck, but no better for my stress than if I was part of that client’s IT team. They come to us and say, “We don’t know how to build SharePoint. Build me SharePoint. Here’s money.”

But, they have still not provided any plan for what to build.

Now, good consultants will ask a lot of questions and maybe even get some good answers. But, the more they have to ask, the more they have to charge – time is money! By this time the business’s managers are usually wavering over whether to scrap SharePoint altogether or to throw “good money after bad” just to save their jobs and/or reputations. So, they pressure the consultants to deliver “something.” And we do. The better of us will try our best to try to deliver something that will make the client happy enough to not stop payment on the check. And if we’ve been able to actually communicate directly with the business employees (not just chosen representatives who rarely have any idea what their people really need) we might just get lucky and provide some business value.

 When I was working for HNTB the first thing I was tasked with when I was hired was helping to come up with a Governance Plan for SharePoint. They had already had SharePoint in a limited distribution for a few years but it wasn’t really used. Some in the company didn’t even know it existed. So we wrote a plan. It ended up being more like rules for use more than a plan for the future. But, it was more than most companies have done prior to a wide roll-out of SharePoint. Later, I was tasked with coming up with just such a plan for growth and development for SharePoint. I did my best, but no one really wanted to state what they wanted out of the platform. They knew they had problems, and I knew some of them could be solved with some implementation of SharePoint or systems integrations tech but I just couldn’t get anyone to commit to particular needs or projected uses. My plan, as good as I tried to make it, was almost completely rejected. Of course, portions of it seemed to come up “piecemeal” as things to do from management. Typical.

But, I don’t bring that up about HNTB to tell you how bad they were. On the contrary! They were leaps and bounds ahead of most businesses that implement SharePoint because they, at least, figured out they needed a plan of some sort. True they deployed and then planned. But, they didn’t do a company-wide rollout until after the plan was completed.
 
Business managers want measurable results. They want a Return on Investment. And they don’t want to have to wait for a year, or more, to get it. I’m not sure why they are so short-sighted. But that might be due to both the platform (again – it doesn’t work like other software) and the general lack of planning in all aspects of businesses that seems to be very wide-spread. Consultants want to make money and so will deliver “something” that looks good and usually provides some functionality. And usually the business managers are happy to have that something to show off to their superiors to show they haven’t just wasted all that money. The business’s IT Pros can then take it and run with it…but they rarely will be given firm direction. They just build and wait for someone to complain. Then they try again.
 
It is the rare business that actually sees the value in planning prior to purchase. It is the MOST important part of any SharePoint implementation. Otherwise, when it comes down to it – we’re still building a house without blueprints.
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Category: SharePoint General
Published: 7/21/2010 4:54 PM
]]> Kevin Hughes SharePoint General Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:57:15 GMT http://www.sharepointkevin.com/Lists/Posts/ViewPost.aspx?ID=42