How to make SharePoint 2010 a success?
July 9, 2010 at 7:34 am | Posted in benefit, governance, intranet, publishing, standards | 13 CommentsTags: best practice, bt intranet, governance, publishing, sharepoint 2010
I recently posted ‘What’s your view on SharePoint 2010?’. I also asked questions on LinkedIn groups about SharePoint 2010. The responses have varied but one thing is clear, there is little practical experience of implementing SP 2010.
Like most organisations at the moment, BT is looking at what SharePoint 2010 has to offer and how it could meet our business needs.
I really want to find out what kinds of frameworks organisations are putting in place to harness the full capabilities of SP 2010, whilst embedding best practice and policy compliance.
Any ideas anyone?
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Here you go sir … http://currents.michaelsampson.net/2010/07/an-answer-to-mark-morrell-markmorrell-on-making-sharepoint-2010-a-success.html
Sorry, it was a bit long for a blog comment
Comment by Michael Sampson— July 13, 2010 #
Michael,
Thanks for taking the time to offer me such great advice. I will read through it in more depth and share with other people in BT. I’ll get in touch with you about what you and BT can do together.
Mark
Comment by markmorrell— July 13, 2010 #
Mark your question is quite complex due to the breadth of capabilities provided by the SharePoint 2010 platform.
I agree with everything in my good friend Michael’s blog posting which he linked above, but I would follow up with some additional questions:
Your looking at SP2010 and how it might meet your business needs – but in which areas ? Content centric collaboration, more ‘social collaboration’, the Business Intelligence features, the ability to use SharePoint as a portal for hosting mashups of data from other systems ??? Or “all of the above” ?
We (Canadian Tire) still don’t have a governance framework that allows us to harness all the features of MOSS2007, but we have concentrated on bits we can deal with. For example we have a project management system based on a customized template for a team site, and there are governance processes around how you get one, how you use it, what happens when the project is complete etc. At the other end of the spectrum a colleague just asked me about MOSS2007 Report Centre and KPI web parts, and no one has “business ownership” of this part of the feature set, so I am guessing they will request it is turned on, and then be left to pretty much do what they like with it.
So I guess you should take everything Michael says, and put in into your very particular BT context, and then give it a good shake
Comment by Jed— July 14, 2010 #
Jed,
Michael’s post was excellent and his follow up call to me really, really, appreciated. He’s a nice guy as well as a collab guy (see his Twitter feed).
BT is assessing SharePoint 2010 to replace anything and everything. Whether it actually will of course depends on it meeting our needs and the benefits justifying a business case being approved for some parts it could replace.
What I’m getting my head around is how BT’s intranet strategy, governance and standards and SharePoint 2010 will fit together so BT gets the maximum benefit from SP 2010′s many capabilities and features.
That’s why help from Michael and from Martin White’s comments above are fantastic.
Mark
Comment by markmorrell— July 15, 2010 #
I’m going to be rather pedantic about your post. First you ask how to make a success of SharePoint 2010. That’s an issue for Microsoft. Your challenge is how to enhance the value of the BT intranet, which is a totally different question.
Then you go on to comment that BT is looking at what SP2010 can offer and how it could meet our business needs. Should it be the other way around. First identify the needs and then work out if SharePoint is the answer.
The problem in most large companies is that they already have all the enterprise systems they need to support work-flow type applications, from BI to ERP to HR to CRM to …etc. But then comes Microsoft with an application that certainly has work-flow capabilities, but also provides functionality to cope with semi-structured intranet-like content. No one is going to throw out their SAP or Oracle HR Portal or Documentum/Open Text or Autonomy application and replace it with SP2010, so IT come after the intranet as a way of justifying the cost of the Enterprise CAL they have had to buy for everyone even if they may only use a very small percentage of the application. Neat marketing.
I’m not saying for a moment that SharePoint is not a good intranet platform, but it absolutely needs the company to have an information management strategy that places the intranet and other applications in a context that identifies overlaps, dependencies and gaps. SharePoint is an information management application, so without such a policy it cannot be deployed effectively. If there were no HR policies and processes would an Oracle HR portal work?
Sorry about the rant Mark, as I know you recognise all this, but you are one of the few that does, and hopefully the many others than read your blog will start to get the message before it’s too late.
Good luck with the project
Martin
Comment by Martin White— July 14, 2010 #
Martin,
You can rant any time you want to me………by phone, email or comment on my blog!
And you’re not being pedantic, more perceptive of the message I’m giving in between the lines of my post.
As you can see from my reply to Jed above/below we are still assessing how all the many good features SharePoint 2010 can best meet our needs and how a framework based on what we know works for BT can be adapted to fit with SP 2010.
The report you wrote for the Intranet Benchmarking Forum and presented on their webinar along with supporting content on your blog http://www.intranetfocus.com/blog/ has been invaluable.
Thank for your for kind words. I’ll try to live up to them over the next few months!
Mark
Comment by markmorrell— July 15, 2010 #
mmm’ Mark, Martin and Michael – obviously if I want to get on in this business I need to change my name to something that starts with M !
Looking forward to reading updates as you progress on your journey
Comment by Jed— July 15, 2010 #
Jed,
I can assure you I am NOT in the same league as Martin and Michael! I think the letter ‘M’ is the one thing I do have in common. I’m just a humble intranet practitioner who learns from people like these and yourself.
Mark
Comment by markmorrell— July 16, 2010 #
How to make SharePoint 2010 a success? « Mark Morrell…
This article has been submitted to IntranetLounge, a website with a collection of links to the best articles about intranets…
Trackback by IntranetLounge— July 19, 2010 #
Hi Mark
I have only just picked up on this thread that yous tarted, and agree with all of thepoints raised so far. I had excellent meetings with Michael when he was in London earlier this year, and he is doing a great job with all of his SharePoint articles, books etc.
One of the areas, that you might find interesting with SharePoint 2010, is how they have now managed to improve the integration of what was formerly Groove into SharePoint Worksspace 2010. WE have been delivering Groove and SHarePoint solutions for manyyears – in fact since Microsoft acquired groove some 4 years ago, and now see real applications where offline, cross organsiational and secure synchronised information management is required.Teh majority of our expertise has been in Healthcare and Local Government, but there will be many areas where I think you can see for the first time a truly integrated approach can be realised. I would love to talk further with you about this. The centralised workflow, use of InfoPath forms does provide opportunities when the services are being delivered away from base, and or invovle third parties.
Comment by Ray Jordan— August 3, 2010 #
Ray,
The best thing would be for you to email me some more details. I’m sure my IT guys will say if they are interested in taking it further or not. I give them the business requirements to find the best technical solution for.
Mark
Comment by markmorrell— August 4, 2010 #
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