SharePoint means Business !

The number one issue is that on both sides of the fence (partner and client) there is a fundamental lack of understanding as to how to approach the subject of SharePoint because in many respects it has been sold as a development platform capable of delivering what anyone wants it to - which leaves most people cold.

However with a business-centric framework, roadmap and business lifecycle approach using business language and a clear business service structure it is far easier to get solid buy-in from the start. And without business buy-in, SharePoint is going nowhere in an organisation.

The amount of times I meet bewildered clients who have no idea what to do with a SharePoint platform that is growing organically and typically, out of contriol is amazing. If that isn't the case then the next most likely scenario is a one-off solution that sits out of context and in isolation and looks like an expensive white elephant. After that come the legions of 'developers' who build a career and CV by being creative with SharePoint but again outside a logical and progressive business-driven roadmap. So the question arises, does SharePoint suck to the client business audiences, or to those trying to manage and create something with it? Maybe both.

The reason why I invented the Salem Process for SharePoint (Sequenced and Logical Enterprise Methodology tm) was because I was quicly becoming the Gordon Ramsey of SharePoint nightmares, listening to business woes whilst the surly IT chef in the back churned out what they felt like. I was continually meeting desperately frustrated clients who had no idea what to do with SharePoint, how to manage it, how to administer it, how to resource it, how to get business buy-in and effective adoption and how to extract the highest business value from it.

Today, our partners and practitioners can and do produce full enterprise business-centric frameworks for SharePoint in two hours and the business audiences absolutely love it because its in a language they understand and presented in the context of their own business challenges. Similarly CIOs are grateful for business-driven service frameworks for SharePoint because they have been seeking strategic business-alignment with their technologies for years. With immediate and cohesive buy-in, its then far easier to move fowards.

I remember a partner CTO once telling me that the Salem Process was lacking something. I asked what, he replied, well Wikis. There you go, my point exactly - technologists think in terms of features, businesses think in terms of business solutions.

In an interview with Zuckerberg recently, he said that it seems to him that today, enterprise technologies are simply presented as ever more extensive feature sets and thats a great point. Partner after partner presents SharePoint in terms of technical demonstrations and feature lists which often bore client audiences senseless, not because the SharePoint features aren't excellent but because they are presented away from the larger business-context and without a business-centric roadmap.

Here is my final example. Technologists constantly talk about 'Search', search capabilities, search configuration, search filters, enterprise search, federated search and so on. We can spend our entire lives searching for something. Business users don't want to search for anything, anything at all - they want to FIND! Imagine if Search was called simply, Find. Speak the right language and things suck quite alot less.

SharePoint isn't an IT project, it is a business program and as such will be viewed far more successfully in the future when it is presented as such, and led by the right sponsors.

Just my view :)                   

The Value of Microsoft Enterprise Licensing for SharePoint

Here at Salem, one of the biggest issues we find with SharePoint client strategy is the lack of clarity regarding the value of SharePoint enterprise services. We spell this out when we consult using the Salem Process with our clients. Imagine a partner simply asking "what would you like ?" and the a client simply provides an uninformed answer without actually understanding what is possible. It is then very easy for a partner to develop a custom solution without ever informing the client that actually this service already exists, often fully formed, within the SharePoint services - at an enterprise level. For many clients they simply do not understand the value of enterprise services until they are demonstrated from a real business-value perspective.

In simple terms, once an enterprise license is purchased, a range of exciting services suddenly become available within SharePoint that offer a huge range of new possibilities. Because many CIO's do not have a clearly-defined long-term SharePoint strategy, so they cannot inform their business audiences of the potential roadmap and potential solutions available and therefore excite the audience about SharePoint potential. Therefore a rather reactive situation occurs without relevant budget in place. A business division asks for a business service and the question is then pitched back to the internal SharePoint administrator/developer/architect - can we achieve this and how, and when? The next thing you know, either a partner is developing a custom solution with little view of the requirements of other business divisions or something is cobbled together that 'may suffice for now'. And things progress slowly and awkwardly and the business audience begins to think that everything in SharePoint land must be like this. No it isn't!

Very frequently business audiences will discuss requirements for management reporting, business intelligence, dashboards, scorecards, workflows, electronic forms and the 'electronicizing' of laborous paper-based processes. yet they are never shown what SharePoint can easily achieve with an enterprise license in place. Then we find quite extraordinary IT-driven conversations regarding the cost of enterprise licensing and how it doesn't make sense without ever working out that if one was to match the enterpise services of SharePoint through bespoke development the costs would be astronomical.

Microsoft have spent years developing the enterprise features and services of SharePoint with their leading international development teams - how could this possibly be matched by a single developer contractor - easy, it can't. What is really happening is often that an IT division itself is not aware of the enterprise services an the business value they bring. Therefore, the business audiences remain uninformed. Consequently it is absolutely essential that any client has a clearly-articulated description of the value of SharePoint enterprise services at the very start.

At Salem we absolutely understand the value of SharePoint as a development platform and we have stressed this in other articles. But we have also seen a number of custom solutions put in place that were clearly developed to work around enterpise licensing costs and are all the more inferior as a result. Short-cuts always show themselves in the long run and there is a reason why enterprise SharePoint services offer such great value for the business audiences.

If SharePoint offers a business audience a wide range of superb, richly featured, integrated SharePoint services then they key is to understand their value at the start, plan them into a sequenced business service plan and justify the cost as a longer term activity rather than simply stating - 'we will deal with that later'. Budget for enterpise licensing for SharePoint as part of the overall strategy and then harness and sweat the SharePoint assets one has purchased to demonstrate how much a business can truly achieve with the right tools.

A good workman should never blame his tools - but without enterprise services, the ambitious workman may well be right !

  
  

The SharePoint Cloud Strategy Dilemma

Whether you may like it or not, the cloud, in all its forms, is here to stay. Internet based services, accessed via a browser etc bring a huge range of technical, administrative, cost and business advantages. That is not to say that on-premise technologies are not relevant or necessary due to current laws, governance and Government/industry policies. But the co-existence of both cloud and on-premise services is certainly the pattern for the coming years.

At Salem we find it exciting how many clients (both large and small)  are now positively looking at cloud-based services as part of their over-arching strategy and also how many business stakeholders are bi-passing IT to harness cloud services directly. Let us not forget that many business units and departments have their own budgets independent of IT and how many can adopt a business service in the cloud without any form of IT input. Now clearly this can lead to cloud sprawl and disconnected services driven by disparate business audiences. Therefore from an IT perspective it is now very wise and timely to consider developing an off-premise strategy that coordinates the fast pace of business change.

It is often cited that IT departments are too slow to react to ever-changing business practices or evolution. For example, a business unit wishes to share information with an external marketing agency, oh and they need to do it by next week. IT needs to have a cloud strategy to facilitate almost on request. If they do not, the business is likely to bi-pass IT and go straight to a service provider for cloud delivery. We have seen this very often as a scenario. We have also seen the scenario where IT uses 'security' as the method by which business adoption of the cloud, is restricted or prevented - whilst IT 'catches up'. This is no more than an excuse in most cases and simply pushes the business audience further away. It is no surpise therefore that business divisions simply buy a cloud-based service when and if they can as it frees them from the slow process of IT department (often frighteningly-slow) service facilitation.

We could even go as far as reminding IT audiences that, generally, they exist primarly to service business audiences, goals, targets, drivers and business ambitions - and do not exist for their own sake. Sadly this is not fully understood in some organisations where IT has matured into a practice that simply appears to exist for its own sake and has created a 'policy machine' around itself as a protective shell (change management and security being often cited as two common examples). This is now completely at odds with the dynamics of cloud-based services. If IT cannot cater to business requirements, the business may consider that it can do without internal IT altogether  - we have already seen this stated in some very large organisations.

So cloud-based services free up a typical business division from the drawn out processes that traditional IT organisations have created. Business users are quickly discovering that service administration overheads are low, licensing is relatively cheap, costs are low, services are up and running within hours or days and that the services do what they say on the tin - they simply work. This is why cloud is being seen within business communities as they way to go.  

Let us also not forget that the typical business user is surrounded by cloud-based services at home. They use Facebook as a part of daily life. Linked-in is now a necessarry business tool. They are accessing web based email and have been doing so often without any form of issue for more than a decade without suffering down-time. A typical business user does not fear losing data in the cloud and probably has cloud-hosted emails dating back years. Cloud upgrades are fully understood as a necessary evil (think how Facebook changes it's user interface periodically) but then again a business user does not need to worry about technology updatesc - they simply happen when they happen.

So back to SharePoint. For organisations now moving to SharePoint there are some very compelling reasons why cloud based SharePoint services are the way to go, particularly for collaboration with external audiences. From a cost perspective seat license costs make perfect sense, the services simply work and a business user feels emancipated from laborious IT processes. Better an It department identifies a cloud strategy than simply ignoring it. Tie SharePoint in with other Microsoft cloud service such as Lync, Office online and Outlook and it becomes difficult for a business customer to understand why one would wish to go any other route. They can sign up and within minutes the service is there, ready to go. When registering for Office 365 beta, we found we were up and running with a range of integrated services within 5 minutes. No IT department can beat that from a standing start!

However we know that cloud services for internal audiences is not always the number one choice for a variety of reasons. Unless one is considering a private cloud solution then the public services can feel restrictive due to a lack of support for developed custom services. However what we find interesting is that clients actually rather like and accept that public cloud service features are presented a certain (fixed?) way and in many ways adopt far faster due to the initial immediate recognition that this service simply works 'as it is'. In other words many business clients will trade off customisation for fast service feature-rich delivery.

With the advent of Office365 replacing BPOS, now is definitely the time to consider a cloud strategy and excite your business audiences with the prospect not only of on-demand business services, delivered almost instantly, but services that can be accessed on the move easily and services that fit in with the modern lifestyle of social-led services.  A business user wants to feel inspired by the company they choose to work for and the latest technologies accessible quickly and efficiently is definitely one way to achieve that feeling. 

SharePoint in the cloud - we say, bring it on !

Budgeting for SharePoint

At Salem we fret about why so many clients have no idea how to budget for SharePoint and in particular why so many aspects of a SharePoint programme budget are missed or left on the table. Clearly there is a very basic view that all a client needs to do is budget for the platform and architecture and everything else will fall into place. At Salem we witness a number of projects (fewer programmes) where the budget really isn't satisfactory and money runs out due to bad planning too early in the cycle. That is not to say a great deal of budget is required, but more about correct forecasting of potential costs from the start.

Of course there are many variables such as whether a solution is on-premise or off-premise, whether the client is looking for a simple single solution or whether there is a long term programme strategy, whether there are sufficient skilled resources in house and the level of licensing. If a client can anticipate potential costs and expenditure up-front and plan accordingly then the process becomes a great deal easier.

There are other issues worth considering. The first is that some partners do not like committing to 'cost guides' and refer purely to T&M (Time and Materials) which means a typical CIO has no idea how much a solution will actually cost until once all the requirements have become clear. This is extremely difficult to budget for, particularly in public sector organisations who typically work on annual fixed budgets, set well in advance. The second is that a business solution is very often offered to the client as a bespoke, custom or developed solution when there are increasing numbers of commoditized SharePoint business solutions on the market that often fulfill 80% of what a client requires without any real development at all. Also bear in mind that for some more traditional engineering-focused partners, offering cloud solutions doesn't (in their mind) perpetuate their established income route.

What is important to recognise for all clients is a value proposition in line with budgeting.  For example a typical corporate intranet (forget the term 'digital workplace' as it lacks focus and definition) has certain core elements that are pretty standard. Therefore it is feasible to offer ball-park prfojections for the cost of an intranet based purely on experience. However for the client, it is very important to recognise that most partners will add in a margin to ensure they are covered against scope creep (which often happens) and unknown requirements early in the cycle, and this should be factored into a budget proposal. Ultimately, however, one cannot compare, say, the cost of a traditional html-driven website and a SharePoint intranet as one is not comparing like with like.

Finally we are yet to see any organisation truly budget for SharePoint adoption or training and frequently costs of this are dramatically under-estimated both in terms of expenditure and in applied costs via impact on business-time. It is essential to plan training costs up front and ensure they are budgeted for.

The following is a quick tick-list of elements of any SharePoint solution that should be considered in the budget planning cycle:

• Strategy  - without a business aligned strategy for SharePoint, the plan may fail. Budget to put an effective SharePoint strategy in place with consultation costs for the required parties
• Infrastructure - the actual cost of hardware as well as installation, configuration, maintenance and support. In situ support vendors may increase their support fees due to the introduction of a new platform
• Cloud - the cost of cloud license services and administration and support costs as well as configuration
• Licensing - Don't forget to cosndier your current Microsoft license agreement, how many server cals and end user cals you need, whether you will need enterprise licensing and how many e-cals, and licensing for internet services
• User interface design - depending on the level of branding, there may be a requirement to budget specifically for detailed user design using a specialist desigh agency via a partner. Few partners have large in-house design teams. Also add in the cost of user experience analysis
• Cost of data migration - whether it is bespoke or migration tools that are required, or partner migration services and consultation data migration and current data analysis and cleansing costs should be considered and factored in
• Reduction through integration - if you aim to integrate into SharePoint, the cost of closing down other services can sometimes be substantial so take this into account. You may also have to support parallel environments for some time
• Partner consultation - SharePoint requires expertise and is not something that should be treated lightly. You may require the services of one or more expert SharePoint partners as well as sklills in supporting technologies. If you do not have this expertise in-house you may need temporary contractors and consultants as well as partner skills
• Delivery - you must factor for in-house cross skilling during the delivery phases and a range of internal support costs. You will also need to budget for partner services during delivery, cost the impact on business time and any cosst for UAT and testing as well as quality assurance.
• Role recruitment - if you need to recruit skills then there are higher costs for contractors or new fulltime staff and you may need to budget for agency fees and commission.
• Adoption - business and IT adoption of any new technology impacts business time and requires an overarching strategy. You should factor in these costs and do not ignore them or down play them.
• Training - training is often a mix of blended media that all costs money and time to prepare and deliver. Training requires expertise to deliver effectively using a range of media and these elements should be budgeted for.
• Communication - without a communication plan, your business audiences will be in the dark. You need to cost out the elements that will produce and deliver and effective communication plan.
• Content creation - almost always missed but when delivering a new SharePoint business services it is very plausible that fresh new content will need to be prepared and written. Who will be doing this, how long will it take and how much needs to be created - at what cost?
• Support - how much will you budget to cross-skill and retrain internal staff or even recruit new support skills. Perhaps your maintenance contracts will need to be re-scoped and you may potentially need to budget for a new support contract with your specialist SharePoint partner(s)
• Administration - consider the day to day costs of running your SharePoint server farms at both the front and back ends. Do you need administration software such as Axceler Control-Point too. Consider whether Cloud services make more sense to cut down on administration costs.
• Development - development is cheaper than enterprise licensing? No we suggest this is false economy! There are a wide range of enterprise services for SharePoint, which, out of the box, may provide fast feature rich business services that are far mor cost effective than individual developed bespoke solutions. Commoditised SharePoint services can bring the cost down from many excellent 3rd parties but you must remember that any developed solution must be maintained, supported, documented and amended, particualrly for platform upgrades. In other words there is a hidden cost of development that is frequently not budgeted for. Developers will need to be paid and what happens when they leave?
• Maintenance contracts - as suggested elsewhere in this list, maintenance costs should be considered from the outset at the strategy and planning stage
• Business impact - typically an IT department will forget or avoid placing a cost on the impact to business time in terms of UAT, going-live, a temporary drop in performance, training and adoption activities, new support processes etc. It is far better to forecast this up front. 
• Process redevelopment - changing processes costs time and money irrespective of whether technology is easy to use. Business change should have a notional cost set against it per process change.
• Removal of other services - decommissioning costs money and you may be tied into legacy support contracts for longer than you had planned where co-existence remains a requirement
• Agile business services - consider how are you budgeting for the growth of ad hoc SharePoint services and the personnel who will be delivering them.
• Annual cycle - take on a programmatic plan for SharePoint, forecast the business service release-cycle annually and budget in advance. Even better look at a multiple year model and budget up front for multiple years
• Scaling - budget for growth and success. How much will you need to set aside for SAN storage growth and server capacity, and what tools are you going to use to measure the growth and how will you facilitate more space as it becomes required ? Also consider that you may move from one server farm to multiple server farms in international and large organisations as services bed in. This should be planned for early in the budgeting cycle.
• Integration with other technologies - you should consider how much it may cost to interface co-existing systems such as SAP or PeopleSoft and the ongoing costs of this process.

Again this is not supposed to be a complete list but an effective start list which may be appended to. If you have started by simply budgeting for some servers, then your SharePoint budget will quickly be eaten up and robbing Peter to pay Paul may simply not be an option. SharePoint is an extremely cost effective solution, and the more a budget is planned correctly and aligned with an overarching business strategy from the outset, the easier it is to prepare the business case and plan the costs appropriately.

The Salem Process for the Cloud

One of the key features of The Salem Process is its agnostic nature of platform. Whether on-premise or off-premise, whether private cloud or Office 365, The Salem Process matches any business aspiration. The modularity supports a blended environment perfectly so core services can be retained in-house of necessary whilst Cloud services from Microsoft can be easily slotted in alongside to enhance and complement an existing solution, whilst still retaining ta very logical business framework.

Here at Salem we are very excited about the opportunities the cloud affords our partners and clients and we have been working steadily with the beta of Office365 to explore how the services can be best used. We look forward to the full commercial release coming shortly.

The Soft Skills of SharePoint

Oh how we get tired here at Salem from the ever-present industry demand primarily for SharePoint developers and architects whilst not recognising the wide range of other skill requirements. It is as if when deciding to adopt SharePoint that it is all about the technology and little else matters until it is 'up and running'. It is so commonly forgotten that not only is SharePoint a business service provisioning platform but that there are a wide range of other 'softer' skills that are required for SharePoint to meet business objectives and embed effectively.

This article is to act as a reminder that there are a range of soft SharePoint skills that should be acknowledged from the start. It is not supposed to be all encompassing but as so often with our articles, it is to open up discussion and debate within our client and partner community.

Here are some to think about and, better still, to appoint.

SharePoint Strategist

If you don't have a roadmap how do you know where you are going. If the strategy and roadmap isn't business-aligned, how do you know where the business is going? Any successful SharePoint implementation will be accompanied by a business-aligned clear service-driven roadmap based in business prioritisation in harmony with a progressive IT approach.

SharePoint Programme/Project Manager

If you can't plan the detail of a SharePoint environment effectively from the start and manage a realistic budget, resources and timelines you may be heading for the rocks. This person will understand any potential pitfalls and logistical hurdles in advance and plan for them accordingly. Just because they may be Prince 2 certified (etc) won't necessarily help so use a SharePoint project expert.


SharePoint Business Analyst

Translating business ambitions, critical requirements and priorities isn't just a process, it can be an art form. An effective SharePoint business analyst will be capable of translating almost any abstract business requirement into a plausible basic technological approach. The most successful SharePoint business analysts we know and use are also SharePoint administrators and know what SharePoint is capable of.


Awareness Campaign Manager


Without an early business awareness campaign, how can business users possibly understand the merits of SharePoint and get excited about the services to come? An early awareness campaign is essential in most cases and therefore a business or technology owner who is a great presenter and who speaks the business language is critical. This role includes a lot of creative thinking and a dynamic, personable character.


Communication Owner

Once the initial awareness campaign ends there is certainly a requirement in many instances for a business-focused communication owner to progess positive SharePoint messages to the business communities regularly and consistently. This often comes from the internal corporate communications department. A range of multi-media techniques may be required.

Corporate Photographer

In the UK an individual owns their own image rights. This means that a company cannot force an employee to publish a specific photo of themselves, particularly in terms of a SharePoint user profile photo. The argument that an employee has signed a contract or that they have a security card with a photo doesn't wash when attempting to use that photo elsewhere without permission. Therefore it is worth considering a decent amateur photographer or a professional to take a range of images of each employee and then allowing the employee to choose one to place on their user profile.

Helpdesk

The typically undervalued helpdesk staff are so easily forgotten here but they are the first line to user support and will need to be trained and understand SharePoint themselves to the be able to send out the right messages and assistance.

Information Analyst/Architect/Governance

Without an effective information architecture you may well have chaos. Where does information get stored, when and why and for how long. How is information classified, how is it tagged, how will people find it and how should they look. How is information segmented and how is it easily navigated to ? These are all questions that require ongoing planning, design, strategy and governance. The Salem Process (tm) provides not only a clear roadmap but a core information architecture to get things established quickly in any organisation.

IT Governance Board/Owner

Governance is key to everythiong that follows. What are the IT rules of engagement that facilitate but allow clear IT policies regarding SharePoint to be owned, understood, communicated and progressed? Do not underestimate the amount of input and thinking that may be required.

IT Change Management Board/Owner

As per another Salem article, change management that is not aligned with SharePoint dynamic and devolved capabilities may quickly stall its adoption and growth. It is essential to bing change management on board from the begining and gain agreement as to how SharePoint and the change process work most effectively and then amend existing processes and policies.

Business Governance Board/Owner

What are the rules of engagement for the business and when should SharePoint be used and in what ways. If the business community is unclear then adoption may stall. Clarity is key so establish this board early and provide a relevant set of governance questions to get things moving.


Business Adoption Owner

Adoption is far more than training as we stated in an earlier Salem article. A business owner who can manage and own the adoption process may prove critical. What are the most effective methods of gaining business buy-in and understanding and then acceptance of the new business services.

Training Strategist and Trainers

There are a huge variery of training methods for SharePoint and they can have different degrees of success dependent on the culture and environments within an organisation. Classroom training may work for 200 staff but not for 30,000 staff across 5 continents. Training also requires an effective budget. Salem Consulting has its own SharePoint Adoption and Training Methodology as well as elite Salem training partners providing adoption strategy and training deliverables for SharePoint.

Floorwalkers

Once a business service is rolled out, people are required to hand-hold and walk the floors offering direct and immediate business-user support for a short time to ensure a quick return to productive working. Questions, answers and explanations are the norm. This role encompasses some of the most important soft skills. Anyone stating that the software should be made as easy as possible to use so that training is not required is fooling themselves and performing a disservice to the business. Any worker has the legal right to be trained to perform their role effectively, and that includes software.

Help Content Writers/Authors

This is not a technical role but someone will need to write the content and quick start guides for the business user to reference to perform the business-focused tasks that SharePoint will facilitate. Do not underestimate the time this will take, Salem Consulting offers base and bespoke help content through its Salem Training partner to assist in speedy adoption.

Graphic Designer

Many SharePoint solution partners do not have big, if any, in-house graphic design capabilities. Many partners farm out this task to suitable design agencies at a cost. Therefore for user interface design and further graphic design tasks, who will be performing this role on an ongoing basis ?

Business Site Administrators

Where you have elected to devolve site collection or site administration to business divisions, who are they, how wuill you select them and what will their role entail? How effective will these people be in coping with the extra demands that have been placed upon them. Furthermore who will train and support them?

Business Power Users/Champions

Early adopters are a great method to gain business champiuons who will spread the good news and positive messages about SharePoint. These people need to be business-focused and represent their business units at a high enough level to be listened to. Effective selection will underpin an effective SharePoint strategy and ongoing service delivery as they will champion the SharePoint cause.

Business Executive Sponsor

If the business leaders have not bought into SharePoint early enough you may have a tough time later convincing them of its merits when their business divisions are busy with business as usual activities. It is absolutely essential to have an executive business sponsor from the start who can champion the merits of SharePoint all the way up to the boardroom and provide the required backing, budget and influence to ensure success and uniform adoption.

SharePoint Business Programme Board

Every SharePoint implementation should be treated as a programme of related activities and projects in our view. The programme and projects need business influence, direction, approval, buy-in and decisions. Without a business board you will be ruderless when key decisions need to be made. The board needs a senior stakeholder who is able to approve budgetary decisions as well as approve governance and policy.

Editorial Feature Writers

It is fine to create a new intranet using SharePoint, and create new dynamic publishing services but who is going to prepare, gather aand write the content in advance? This is certainly true of new internal communications activities with a SharePoint driven news centre but extends far futher. Typically all aspects of new SharePoint business services will require new content written and ready for the go live date and beyond. Remember that these people will need to be trained and supported.

Content Managers

SharePoint business services require people to provide fresh and up to date content. Whilst a central news or home page environment may be managed by a central editorial team, other areas such as business unit areas within an intranet will require new landing pages, new thinking and fresh material and therefore expect a range of content manager material to be required, now and in the future. Remember that these people will need to be trained and supported.

Quality Assurance - Editorial

Someone somewhere within the organisation will need to approve new content prior to publication and therefore there may be a requirement for an approval process or else an editorial web manager to justify content, approve it and ensure it is written well enough to be published. They may also define editorial standards, writing and style guides and templates.

Style and Brand Owner

For larger organisations, style and brand is very important and carefully designed and approved, particualry in retail environments but these days can apply to the majority of organisations. For intranets and information publication there may well be a requirement for a business stakeholder to be involved in ensuring that brand and style guidelines are not only applied correctly to the user interface and page look and feel but also to a wide range of materials to be published within the SharePoint environment. This is also certainly true of SharePoint internet sites.  

Search Best Bets Owner

There will be a requirement to translate business phrases and keywords into best bets for early and effective search results. Don't ignore this as it is managed through central administration but may require an owner to ensure that best bets are handled effectively for a wide range of business stakeholders.

Does Change Management Stall SharePoint Progression

Time and time again the Salem strategists encounter a particular issue with client IT departments which is the overly-cautious approach to changes within the SharePoint environment. Clearly solid farm configuration and administration is essential, and fundamental changes to infrastructure and configuration 'on the fly' with little forethought are to be avoided at all cost. Hence change management protects the IT department and it's employees.

However, SharePoint, when designed, scaled and built properly is designed as a dynamic and agile platform for a wide range of business service opportunities hour-by-hour, day by day. Thus it is not a question of whether there are IT change management processes, but how they are used within the realm of SharePoint service delivery.

For SharePoint to be successful in most business scenarios, the ability of a business user to generate a temporary workspace or team site, for example, with no IT involvement is a very liberating and powerful experience, and one that sells SharePoint across the diverse business communities quickly. On the other hand, routing a business user through a long-winded process of justification for what may be only a temporary requirement is hugely frustrating and challenging and it won't take long for the business users to use something else.

An IT department is often an orderly, considered, diligent and deliberately process-driven environment. However few business users can really come to terms with why they can upgrade their desktop at home in less than 60 minutes but it takes an IT division 6 months or more to achieve the same result. Of course we know why but it is important for an IT department to be seen as a dynamic facilitator meeting business objectives rather than as the hurdle that prevents the business from adapting and succeeding in a challenging market.

SharePoint, when approached correctly is one of an IT department's greatest allies. Simply because devolved solution provision to the business community makes business users feel far more in control and also because IT is seen as the facilitator. Yet this is often not the case.

There are a couple of important reasons we regularly encounter. The first is that the IT department is treating SharePoint as if it is like all the other platforms and applies the same change control processes when they are in fact inappropriate to the nature of the platform. The second is that change control is used to deliberately control a slow release of services due to the fact that the IT department is worried about the in-house skill levels and also being found out as not being fully comfortable with devolution of service.  Ownership is power !

The primary issue is one of embedded IT culture where we encounter IT teams stating that they have always worked this way and they always intend to, and that business administration of business services would quickly cause technical administration and management problems. This isn't entirely true and where each site collection has been properly designed and a quota applied then business devolution can indeed occur.

The advice that Salem offers is that to succeed with SharePoint it is essential from the outset that any IT department takes a completely fresh approach to SharePoint and how it will be used by the business community and which services can be exempt from change control and passed over as agile user-driven services. Once these services are freed from IT change management then the business users can be better informed and trained to create services as required and as their needs dictate. It is always interesting to watch the reaction to a very formal and heavily controlled environment when we show how Office and Outlook can provision user-driven temporary workspaces without any IT request.  Similarly, should a business user customise their desktop icons, or aspects of Excel or Word, does anyone care, not usually. Therefore why should an IT department be overly concerned about the provisioning of a team site and what it is being used for ? 

For those IT departments who rigidly apply entrenched change management processes to SharePoint, they are missing one of the most intrinsic and fundamental aspects of the platform which is the fast and agile ability to create something new and useful in seconds without a great amount of technical know-how. Put that back into the hands of a technologist and one has just stepped back a decade - it's really that simple.

This article was published without a change request.

The Commoditization of SharePoint Matters

When I was young, I started fishing in some local lakes and I used to try and make my own floats out of balsa wood. At first they were useless but after a while I got a little better and had a small box that I kept them in. However making floats was time-consuming, hit and miss, and sometimes an abject failure - they perhaps saved me a little money but they didn't help me achieve my goal of catching more fish. Eventually I simply bought new floats from a shop and got on with the task of catching fish.

For the last decade or so, an entire global industry has matured in developing bespoke solutions and custom application development for SharePoint. Allegedly today the global services industry for SharePoint accounts for approximately $6 billion in partner revenue. To a degree this demonstrates exactly how far the global SharePoint market has grown. One only has to look at the relentless recruitment of 'SharePoint developers' to understand how much custom application work is being undertaken.

So let's stop and ask why. The vast range of services of SharePoint out-of-the-box is unparalleled and if any company simply mastered the basic features, services and functions (and was made aware of them in business scenarios) then they would already have a great and positive deal on their hands. All too quickly however, many partners are quick to sell custom application development, custom user interfaces and custom web parts - why well because that is what the client thinks they want (or has been told that is what is required) and often because SharePoint can indeed facilitate that approach.

The issue however is in terms of business buy-in and user adoption. For many corporations, the early quick wins are fundamental to bedding in SharePoint into business life. An effective user profile and profile search is often of far greater value early in the cycle than a custom procurement system, or a bepoke developed application.

Time is one of the greatest factors. The development cycle of any custom application is longer than a client realises. Today with so many corporate IT environments being led by non-IT-literate teams (often finance-background people) then they themselves have little true understanding of a code-development lifecycle. Indeed we remember a particular IT manager who stated that any code released with bugs is unacceptable! The iterative development and bug-fix cycle is often lost on IT management teams who expect solutions to be delivered bug-free and perfectly, at the lowest cost and first time round. This creates a problem in terms of delivery timescale expectation-management.

More to the point, an early engagement with a SharePoint business client from a development angle entrenches the early view that everything to be delivered in SharePoint is a project, is time consuming, is relatively expensive, requires a maintenance contract, and requires an iterative and frustrating period of bug fixing with a partner or contractor team. None of which needs to be true. And then the question arises as to how a custom application will be developed further or supported in-house, if that is the strategy. It always amazes us at Salem why so many companies embarking on a SharePoint project begin by trying to recruit a SharePoint developer - what are these people developing, and why so early?! We know for sure that some service companies willingly sell SharePoint as a development platform on purpose as it will provide a cash cow for years to come.

Here at Salem we fully understand and appreciate the benefits of customisation. Certainly custom user interfaces that match brand and style guidelines can assist in acceptace and adoption by the business users. However customer user interfaces and custom application development are rather different topics. In all circumstances, however, user interface design should be overlayed on top of the engineered solution, not the other way round. Trying to re-engineer SharePoint technology to meet a visual style is a strategy to spend lots of budget unnecessarily - the form over function dilemma.

Back to the subject in hand. If SharePoint is going to grow and embed in a wide range of organisations then the commoditisation of SharePoint is now essential. What do we mean by this?   There are a wide range of services, requirements and business solutions that are common to many (if not most) organisations which should exist as add in services. To a degree we see this being catered for by a few well known web part companies. But there is simply not enough of this happening. Why pay for a partner to develop a contract management system when one can be slotted in that has already been developed. Why develop a clock when a clock already exists? Why develop a news centre when one is already written. Well from a solution delivery company perspective, it increases revenue to develop custom applications.

Imagine then if one can use SharePoint out-of-the-box with a range of add-in business solutions already pre-built. What this means is that the initial adoption cycle is far faster for the end client, business buy-in is enhanced as it demonstrates how quickly business solutions can be achieved. It means that SharePoint is far more likely to be adopted and then entrenched early which in turn allows client budget to be focused on more pressing matters or more challenging services that are unique to that organisation.

Another example is where an intranet is designed from scratch: why we ask? So many organisations across so many business verticals share the same ambitions that the only thing that truly changes is the user interface. The business services being requested are often far too similar to require a greenfield approach every time. Does this mean therefore that there is a requirement for a far faster agile approach to early SharePoint business service release, and in our opinion the answer is yes.

To set the scene to any client, it is extremely important to show how quickly intial valuable business services can be delivered and to progress quickly into a longer SharePoint programme in terms of value proposition. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a custom application as a starting point is not necessarily going to ingratiate the platform into the busienss community. Therefore early prioritization is intrinsic to success.

It is time for the SharePoint partner community to embrace how to deliver effective business soltions fast, early into the lifecycle using a standard range of services. It is certainly time for development companies to commence creating business solutions so that they can be packaged, sold and deployed again and again to a wider range of clients without the need for full development cycle every time. It is time that clients were given a quick sense of achievement with SharePoint rather than frustrating delays and large budgets and UAT iterations that appear to last a lifetime.

For those that argue that every customer is different, well when you have seen as many clients as we have, the one thing that strikes us more than anything else, is actually how similar business requirements are across a wide and diverse range of business verticals. Are clients worried that their competitors are using the same desktop and same version of Word or Excel - of course not. SharePoint is a superb development platform, but develop when necessary, customise when required, but ensure first that in the early months of SharePoint release, there are a wide range of quick-wins that excite the client audiences and demonstrate real value, fast.

I caught some of the best fish ever recently, and it wasn't using a custom-made float.

The Ubiquitous and Dubious Nature of 'Like'

Do you remember (thanks Gabriella) the old movies about Gladiators and the roaring crowd with their thumbs up or down to decide whether people live or die ? Well we are interested and somewhat concerned by the ever more ubiquitous presence of the Like icon across the internet. It now appears almost everywhere.

Someone posts on a Facebook wall, or a Linkedin news feed, YouTube videos or posts a tweet on Twitter (favourite) and directly underneath is a thumbs up symbol. What is it actually there to achieve we ask ? In it's simplest form it is a quick symbolic way of representing agreement - yes we share the same view. But what it doesn't say is why we like it. Worse, is that we often come across the second or subsidiary reverse option which is to 'unlike' (sic) and yet not to 'dislike'. Perhaps disliking something is just one step too far for most and positivity is the only way forward. Yet there are many times when we disagree with a post and don't like what is being said and the only way we can get this across is to comment. Therefore you can say yes you agree with no comeback but if you disagree, you will need to state why.

In some ways it is a little like the ratings system that was so fashionable a while back and which now pervades many SharePoint solutions. A rating system does not mean something is good in general, it means that it was valuable to me personally if I rated it - it is valuable to me. Think of Amazon and the user feedback on an item. 5 gold stars doesn't mean it is great, it means it is great for the person who rated it. Do you take subjective recommendations on a movie by a friend and then don't go and see it ? No, you go and see it and make your own mind up if you have any sense. In other words, what counts to you, is not what counts to someone else. That is what makes the world diverse and interesting.

Therefore the thumbs up icon, whilst steadily invading every aspect of the internet, may say that someone likes what is being said, it is entirely subjective and in itself is not necessarily a general endorsement of value to others. Peer pressure may indicate that others should agree too and this is where a problem can occur. Look at YouTube and you will see both a thumbs up and a thumbs down icon. When someone dislikes a video they don't necessarily need to explain why but for those who rated the video subject matter highly they then tend to abuse those who disliked what others liked. It is for this reason therefore that a thumbs up is problematic and misleading in too many scenarios.

A good friend of mine asked me why I gave a thumbs up to a few of my own Facebook posts and I argued that it was because I found the thing I posted as humorous or of value to me but she argued that liking your own entries is the worst thing one can do as it is egocentric. An interesting debate topic for sure and I can see how she could be interpreted as right but then again I couldn't dislike her comment as there was no icon.

One may argue that for sheer balance a dislike icon should always accompany a like icon but without added commentary it really tells us nothing except peer agreement and peer agreement without explanation is all too similar to sheep mentality where those of a weaker disposition may be influenced too easily and simply agree with the masses for acceptance sake. This is therefore the antithesis of user-centricity, personal value systems and good solid debate.

Before you click on the like icon next time ask yourself what it is to achieve and how you would equally show your dislike of something. We could add a like icon to our blogs, but then again, you may not agree with our sentiments: and that is perfectly fine with us - we like that. 

When Social Networking isn't Social Networking

A previous Salem article featured thoughts on the plethora of consulting companies jumping on the social networking bandwagon. This article is more specifically focused on social networking within organisations and typically when the topic crops up regarding SharePoint implementations.

Let us start by trying to define what we mean by social networking in this context. Well, social typically means personal, in other words, nothing to do with performing the business of the day. Every company has social networks, visits to the bar on a Friday after work for gossip, office romances, office divorces, scandals, the social aspects of office politics, gossip about anything and everything. It doesn't matter how much a company tries to keep chatter under control, it simply disappears underground, but it remains. We cannot count the amount of times that a company will say they wish to be seen as a collaborative organisation but would not consider fabulous services such as Microsoft Lync because people 'will chat and waste time too much'. Believe us, people will talk no matter what, even over the water cooler and at break times, in the canteen, in the toilets, in the bar, on the phone, indeed anywhere. So why not harness real time collaboration and conversation as part of the intrinsic culture of the organisation rather than trying to repel it?

Okay so we also hear CEO's occasionally saying they would like to have their company have a 'Facebook style culture'. Well what they mean is real time conversation, collaboration and sharing, what they don't mean is social networking in the social way we have just defined it. And even if they do mean that they will not be able to cope with the HR governance and policy issues that follow when Dave from Accounts publishes the fact that he has just split up from Sue in Sales and is now seeing Fiona in Finance. Only once have we encountered a large organisation that has embraced social networking at the core of its collaborative ethos and this was presented by way of an intranet home page dedicated to an open discussion board where just about anything and everything could, and was, discussed. The bottom line for most larger organisations is that they will not achieve a Facebook culture in the office as corporations are risk-averse.

The issue with the concept of social networking within business environments is that, unlike personal social networks, there is nothing in it for the end user. Why would a business user start to publish personal and private details about themselves unless they were trying to make friends or were a newcomer to a company. They have already established their own social network in the office and its relativel;y low risk. As most people accept, knowledge is power, and the longer someone has been in post, the more they entrench themselves via what they know and what they have learned. Sharing personal thoughts and social aspects of themselves in a  corporate environment not only worries HR deeply, but also exposes the end user to a degree of professional risk. Expose the wrong information, say the wrong thing and that elusive promotion may go straight out of the window. Comment in an inappropriate way and one may be disciplined. Say what is on one's mind and one may find ones self being shown the door.

If this is true, then why are there so many consulting companies using the term 'social networking' to corporations? Well as per our other article, there is a degree of trendy bandwagon jumping going on, and using the latest terms to an older generation of business leaders makes them think they are missing out on something important and assisting in generating consulting revenue.

The reality is that we are not dealing with social networking within organisations (save for the ambitiously-thinking minority), what we are really dealing with are social networking techniques applied for business scenarios, which is somewhat different. Techniques and technologies such as user-centric My Sites, subscription-based news feeds, RSS subscriptions, Office Talk business 'tweeting', status updates, discussion forums, instant messaging, presence awareness, ratings and comments are all part of the technology set that has become fashionable and effective in social networks that translates perfectly to business environments. But rarely is there anything social about it in truth.

Therefore by applying the techniques and psychology from social networks we can indeed look at how effective knowledge and skill-based networks can be employed by organisations that which to be progressively more interactive, open, collaborative and how business adoption and buy-in can be obtained and maintained.

However for the majority, the term social networking without any form of clarification, in our view, represents a populist phrase that has no depth or substance or value for a business environment, and is currently particularly abused within the consulting industry. Dave may still be dating Fiona in Finance, but frankly, it's none of our business.

Social Networking - Or Dad Dancing ?

Have you ever been embarassed by your father dancing like an ill-coordinated jellyfish at a wedding to some 70's or 80's 'classic' ? Have you ever been mortified when your mum decides to dress as a 22 year old ? We sure do, and worse still, we get the same feeling when 'social networking' is mentioned increasingly in corporate land. Now, one thing is for sure, we cannot get away for the dramatic impact (which is vastly understood as yet) of social networking on our culture as it is becoming all pervasive.

However when we see the topic of social networking in corporate spheres it is often by way of a desperate desire to be seen as 'current', 'with it', 'down with the kids', and more worryingly, a desire to make money out of it for corporate means that has not been thought through properly. Trendiness in management consulting is something that is very aligned with dad dancing because it is often via an older generation out of step with a younger generation but eager to please and be accepted as thought-leaders when it isn't true. If there is money to be made a the expense of a younger generation, you can be absolutely certain someone will try it.

A classic example is the often-seen desire for a corporation to include a clock on the home page of a SharePoint intranet as it is perceived as 'useful'. One should perhaps take note that younger generations rarely wear a watch due to the fact that every gadget and mobile device tells the correct time, all the time. In another similar vein, California school children were asked why they wouldn't use the school email system, with the overwhelming response that 'email is for old people'. Yet your parent's (or boss's) mastery of writing an email is somewhat viewed as a forward step!

Why then are we witnessing so many management consulting firms, and recruitment organisations jumping on the social networking bandwagon. Well, first of all it makes these companies appear as 'current', secondly it allows them to feel they are not being left behind in an ever-changing technological age, and thirdly, someone can smell money. I remember so well in the 1970's when a thousand companies were set up to cater for the skateboard craze across the globe, and almost all of them had vanished as we hit 1980 - they came to learn the jargon, they had the money to be seen as influencers, they made their cash and then made a quick exit. Will the same happen again with social networking in corporate land - very possibly.

Okay so what do we think is really going on ? Well when we see so many untrendy, traditional corporate firms getting excited about social networking what they mean is that there is a way of making money through accessing a large pool of resources that have, to date, not been traditionally accessible to them (or more usually, avoided them). Let's take recruitment as an example. Recruiters traditionally build a database of people with skills and a CV and then match them by one means or another to job vacancies. It has been the way for decades. Rather like dating agencies really. Suddenly we see an influx of discussions regarding recruitment using social networking - in other words, when we have a lack of resources is there a way to reach and attract those we may not have found otherwise. Have you stopped to consider that these people don't want to be found?

I remember reading a website in the USA once regarding the ability to trace and locate individuals. The website asked the simple question, why not just email them or call them -  and ask yourself the question, if you have to trace someone, should you really be trying to contact them at all. In simple terms, people like to manage, organise and control who they are in touch with, who they contact and specifically who they do not wish to be contacted by. Spam calls to home phones and spam email to our inboxes have been a problem for over a decade and are now on the wain. So why would anyone think it is a good idea to try and use social networking environments to, in effect, spam people who are most probably not interested in your services ?

One only has to ask an audience whether they click on pay per click search results to find that many people avoid these ads because they don't like being sold to. No one likes walking into a store to have a look around only to be pounced upon by three shopfloor assistants with targets to achieve. Do you read the junkmail pushed through your letterbox, no us neither.

So why is there an obsession in corporate land with social networking? Well because there are hundreds of millions of people who are inter-related or connected to eachother for social reasons - but maybe, just maybe you can sell them something, or recruit them, but at least make money out of them, or worse still, talk about the topic of social networking in general and charge for it. Social networks are 'socially-driven' whether it be family, love, likes, shared hobbies or egotistical requirements to be 'seen as popular'. People are connected for private and personal reasons. Do you have 1000 Facebook friends ? But whatever the reason these internet communities are not called 'business networks' for a very good reason. Social means 'not work'.

Let us relate it to SharePoint. SharePoint is a relatively small community of talent which is growing but which is still less than the number of roles available. Each recruitment firm wants to get as many SharePoint people on their books as possible (often without any vetting) so that they can place them for a fee. That's fine as that is how the model works. The issue is that recruitment is a very tough and cut-throat business and any recruitment firm wants to be the one who finds the person and places them, thus sustaining a business relationship with the corporate client (they don't care about the person being place in general). So what happens when the resource pool becomes very limited? Well the recruiters start to think of other ways of attracting talent so that they can place them elsewhere. Personally I have had two agents from the same company, one who placed me and the other trying to lure me away from that role to a different firm purely for commission ! When one has talents in short supply, one will be very careful who one chooses to work with - period.

So social networking. Yes a huge talent pool accessible in a way that was never possible before Well maybe not actually. People are now hiding their Facebook profiles, making themselves non-searchable, hiding their connections and limiting access to personal information. Why, because people are quickly discovering that they are not as in control of who can contact them as they may desire. The social networking communities have matured enough to know what they like and what they do not. Then late in the day the men in the black suits arrive banding around the term 'social networking' as if they had just discovered the largest gold mine in the world, at least five years too late.

Social networking is not new. Remember the communities on Compuserve in the mid to late 1990's and how popular they were? We all have social networks beyond the internet in our daily lives, the people who know, the people we share a beer or dinner with, the people we hook up with for social events. We have our social network - we sms them and call them up. Interestingly half of my friends don't even use an internet social network but I still talk to them and see them regularly, if not more regularly than internet 'friends'.

So why now? Well because Facebook and similar social networks are becoming entrenched in our daily lives as a means of communication, real time social communication. Linkedin is a business networking service that is increasingly becoming bastardized from its excellent origins. Looking at the Linkedin news feeds today it is increasingly resembling boys in a sales office, sharing banter and finding humour in each other's comments. That's okay but its detracting from the value of Linkedin and making it feel like a  club one should either join or avoid. Do I share my business connections, do I heck for the simple reason is that it is my private business networking build over years of professional discussions and business connections that I am not going to share with any lazy recruiter out there.

Therefore, the last 18 months has seen huge amounts of corporate speak, business seminars and recruiter strategies regarding social networking - I don't remember seeing these people in Compuserve in 1996. I remember the days when a recruiter would buy me a pint or lunch and form a valuable business relationship - not any more. These days everything appears to be performed on the cheap and I cannot remember a time when I last met a recruiter face to face. One should remember that people are far from stupid and know which firms are good, which are bad to work for on reputation, how much their value is in the marketplace and where they would like to go next. Trying to enter and sell within a social networking space won't help you, if the product you are selling isn't popular.

So the next time you see a thread or advertisment in corporate land regarding social networking as yourself a simple question. Does this company actually fully understand the topic of social networking and has a long history in the subject - because if not, you may simply be witnessing your dad at a wedding trying to get to grips with some dodgy dance moves to Lady Gaga. Best avoided.

SharePoint Internet Websites - The Perfect Platform

Here at Salem Consulting we are often asked whether SharePoint is a good platform for publishing internet websites and the answer is certainly yes. To demonstrate this effectively take a look at this excellent website for inspiration:

http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/topwebsites.aspx

However, it isn't SharePoint that is the issue, but more to do with badly thought-through corporate websites in general. What are they there to achieve, who are the audiences, are the sites effective and have they been optimised for search engines (yes we are skilled in SEO strategy at Salem too) ? We have seen far too many badly thought-through internet facing sites (on a wide range of platforms) that simply achieve nothing and act as poor brochureware. If a company is going to design a new internet website, first ensure that the correct analysis takes place so that the website achieves the goals set from the start.

It is true that for ecommerce and webshops, SharePoint is not as yet ideally suited as things stand. However do take into account that it will only be a matter of time before we find Biztalk modules servicing these requirements, in our opinion.

If you are wanting to leverage your SharePoint assets, then incorporate your websites into your SharePoint strategy, as SharePoint is a fantastic platform to facilitate. If it's good enough for Ferrari, it is good enough for us !

The Key Skill Roles of SharePoint

This article is based on one we wrote and published a couple of years ago but has been reconsitituted and updated. We know that the original article was received well as it was used by 3rd parties when presenting at seminars (we have spies everywhere ;) ). We are publishing it again for those who didn't see the original SharePoint article.

Essentially, when looking at job boards and talking with generalist recruiters, three roles crop up time and time again, architect, developer and administrator. If one didn't know better, one would thing that encompassed all the core skills of SharePoint but in fact it is extremely misleading and doesn't come close to explaining the various skills that one may encounter or require when engaging with SharePoint. This is why it is essential to be talking to a specialist SharePoint recruitment organisation such as Campania Consulting (www.campaniaconsultinggroup.com).

Consider the following list of plausible SharePoint roles:

SharePoint Strategist
Currently not a term used in the market for recruitment though there are one or two partners now understanding that this role should/could exist. It is what we do here at Salem and incorporates enterprise business consulting for SharePoint with detailed roadmaps, approach, alignment with business strategy and IT strategy and conceptual business solutions that would use SharePoint and related Microsoft technologies. 

SharePoint Practice Lead

Primarily for partners though a large corporate may be looking for a similar role. Sometimes known as an SME or subject matter expert. Combines a range of technical, consulting and strategic skills and will own and lead the SharePoint practice for a partner firm. Generally a thought leader, involved in public facing blogs, literature, author of industry materials. These people will currently be primarily deeply technical SharePoint specialists but without in-depth business consulting skills, although preferable for this role. Would expect to have excelllent presenting skills. In the UK possibly no more than 30 to 40 people would fulfill all requirements presently.

SharePoint Solutions Architect

One of the most common titles for a top level SP role. Wide range of technical skills but does not need to be deeply technical or have developer skills (though often asked for by corner-cutting companies who wish to find a one-man-band). Full and wide understanding of all SharePoint technical services who can translate a business strategy or business solution request into a logical technical solution using SharePoint and related technologies. Not always a doer, but will be expected to present, consult and have a deep enough technical knolwedge to lead thhe technical team in delivering a custom SharePoint solution. This role often consults with business stakeholders, will manage QA and hold responsibility for the overall solution release.



SharePoint Technical Architect (senior)

Sitting alongside or just under the Solutions Architect is the person who has the deepest overall technical understanding of the SharePoint platform, some development skills but not a deeply technical developer. Will manage the actual solution design, creation and deployment and configuration. Often in charge of the documentation for clients if working for a partner and will also have a great deal of say in overall infrastructure and farm design and provisioning.
This person is a doer and will be very hands and will lead the technical team through design and delivery, understanding every element involved. 

SharePoint Architect

The jobbing technical SharePoint enginner with a wide range of technical and associated skills. Will not consult with the business usually and will be IT based. Does not have to have presentation skills and will be primarily focused on the design, build, and configuration of the SharePoint platform and solution. Will work alongside developers and may have deeper developer skills but may be a true developer themselves. Will have a deep technical understanding of the sharepoint landscape but may not be a specialist in all areas and will add them to their skill portfolio over time. Will certainly have platform design skills and a huge amount of configuration skills. Be careful with these people as we'd expect to see qualifying credentials to prove they are an architect and not an administrator. 

SharePoint Infrastructure Architect

You will not see this title too often as yet but is a focused skillset for enterprise deployments who knows exactly how to design and build multi farm enterprise deployments, often covering multiple continents. Will be well versed in federated search and SSP provisioning across multiple farms. This person will be building enterprise architectures in SharePoint based on the output from either the strategist or solution architect. May be asked to combine skills with AD and other infrastructure skillsets. Will understand virtualisation (VMWare or Microsoft Hyper-V) as well as physical design and have SQL skills to an extent. Will also know associated administration (eg Axceler), backup (eg AvePoint), archive (eg Symantec or Zantaz) and other toolsets and can advise accordingly. This is a very technical platform design role which may be viewed as specialist. There are so few people outside the partners who can do this well that FTE salaries will vary widely. These skills may also be found as part of a Senior Technical Architect or Solutions Architect role in the right person with acquired history and skills.


SharePoint Search Architect

With the advent of FAST there is certainly a requirement for FAST search engine skills in terms of design, configuration and deployment. Will also combine skills in standard SharePoint search and Entertpise SharePoint search services. Plausible to find these skills in senior architect roles but is becoming more highly specialist and may link to searching other respositories such as SAP etc. Requires a full understanding of taxonomies, folksonomies, tagging, content types, user search experience, best bets, keywords, multi farm federated search and search design and customisation. You will rarely if ever see this role advertised as titled but this is thought leadership so we should be advising as such. Large globals may recognise this role if advised correctly. There is a link between this role and an information architect to a small degree.


SharePoint Information Architect

More often a general information architect usually with a variety of backgrounds but we would strongly advise any client to find one with detailed sharepoint understanding. Knows how to build logical information frameworks for a wide range of sectors and industries down to business units and departments. Good ones will also know how to handle multi languages information architectures. Understands and can advise on classification, taxonomies, folksonomies and how information should be split and provisioned within SharePoint. May/should also have expertise in document mangement, version control techniques, data returntion polices, publication and archiving practices. Often an ex librarian and sometimes guilty of over complicating a solution (taxonomy). May also have expertise in internal communication techniques and compliancy and leghislation requirements. Specialist and good ones are hard to find. 

SharePoint Farm Administrator

The person who day to day manages the servers that run sharepoint, manages, installs and configures the operating system, sharepoint software, patches, service packs, configures the back end, links to content databases, and may work with other farm admin tools like Axceler. may well have SQL DBA skills also. Generally an FTE role that is often combined with the front end administrator role below or other server infrastructure environments (maybe Exchange, Lync, OCS etc etc). Will configure and manage virtualisation, performance, run reports, upkeep the core services and diagnose and troubleshoot when things go wrong. With multiple farm deployments for a global company there may be a local farm adminsitrator in each location. We've most often seen this role combined with people who are also managing other infrastructure such as AD but for larger environments may be deemed a full time role. This role may also be combined with other roles in SME companies.

SharePoint Administrator

The front facing support and configuration role day to day that should exit in all SharePoint environments. For global companies there may be a lead administrator and then local administrators. This role manages and provides front-end services such as creation of site collections, quotas, some 2nd and 3rd level support, security, site administration, template creation and management, some solution creation when part of business as usual activities. Will also manage change control tasks, documentation and even advise business customers day to day onsite. The most important customer facing role of all the roles on an ongoing basis and one of the most common roles requested. 

SharePoint Developer

The most misunderstood of all the SharePoint roles and one requested most often by end clients who think SharePoint is purely a development platform. A range of developer skills including .NET, C#, C++, Jquery and a wide range of other languages. Hoqwever sharepoint development is rather different from pure .Net development even though SharePoint is built on .NET. On other words the .Net developer needs to know how to specifically develop for SharePoint and must know how to develop custom webparts. Strategically a developer should not be required in the early stages of SharePoint provisioning but many companies think differently and will use developers from the start which is why they customise too early and then fail as they cannot support what they have created. Basically these guys code services in SharePoint that do not exist out of the box. However beware, development requirements are often nothing more than 'custom configuration' which is a lesser skillset than a true developer.

Infopath and Workflow Designer/Administrator

Using Microsoft Designer and Microsoft Infopath, a company can create electronic forms and then write workflows. these are custom, bespoke and will need to be backed up with good BPM business analysis to create the required business solutions. To a degree this is a customer facing role where there is no intervening business analyst. The workflows will need to be amended, recoded and supported periodically and this role could be for the duration of a project or an ongoing role. Either way as companies increase the number of workflows, so this role can take up more and more time. In the beginning it may be a role shared with other tasks and later can become dedicated. Here we are not suggesting that the skills involve other workflow products such as K2, Global 360 or Biztalk or even Metastorm but this may happen as the company advances its workflow strategy. See below for another workflow role. 

SharePoint User Interface Designer

Basically a graphic designer for SharePoint who can create the user interface designs and may work with a user adoption expert as well as the business stakeholders in interpreting brand and style guidelines. Partners  want Ui people and can't get them as the partners aren't attractive as they are not design agencies. In an ideal world this person can code html, silverlight etc and can actually create the designs and implement them with the technical architect and developers. However some Ui designers are nothing more than digital graphic artists so it depends what is being asked for. 

SharePoint Business Analyst

Ordinary Project managers often become BAs and ordinary BAs often become project managers, and many swap between the two roles, so beware of that. A dedicated technical SharePoint business analyst combined consulting skills, business analysis skills and SharePoint administration skills so that they can interpret business requirements and offer a solutiion using the standard sharepoint services and features. This role is now increasingly understood and is being advertised more. This role should have a fundamental understanding of SharePoint services, be extremely customer facing, a good presenter and may have a technical background. The role needs to adjudge the best services to use in SharePoint and can advise the business sponsor accordingly. Whilst not all sharepoint BAs have good technical skills, the best ones certainly do and it would be these we would go for. General BAs have a place but cannot interpret a business requirement technically for SharePoint and will need to reply on the architects to interpret for them. 


SharePoint Programme/Project Manager

There are lots of Prince 2 certified people and lots of people who have seen a SharePoint team site. This does not create  a SharePoint PM. The role needs a fundamental technical understanding of SharePoint and how to quantify and cost solutions and timescales as well as adjudge resource levels etc. Only a PM with a good grasp of SharePoint can hope to deliver successfully as there are too many pitfalls otherwise. Therefore SharePoint PMs do exist and are advertised in the market. A SharePoint programme manager who should err on the side of deep understanding of SharePoint approach and strategy - there are hardly any good sharepoint programme managers in the market purely because SharePoint has been sold at a project level by partners for far too long. The vast majority of excellent SharePoint programme and project managers are ex-partner staff so check credentials carefully.

SharePoint DBA (SQL)

Rare and often unnecessary as a specific role in many implementations but someone somewhere needs to know how to manage the SharePoint SQL databases and as such there will need to be a SQL DBA skillset. The SharePoint farm administrator can manage the content databases through their standard tools but there may be a greater degree of SQL skills required for some architectures. 

Active Directory Administrator

SharePoint is driven by Active Directory and any SharePoint deployment requires AD administration skills as part of the ongoing support and configuration, particularly user profiles. Therefore where a company does not have good AD skills in place, they will need them. Few companies have no AD skills unless they are using an outsourced IT model.


SharePoint Workflow Specialist

Where SharePoint Designer (product) isn't enough and a company selects K2, Biztalk or some other 3rd party workflow product then these skills will be requested. 

SharePoint BI Analyst/Architect/Administrator

With the advent of PerformancePoint services in SharePoint 2010 there is a big uptake on BI services in SharePoint. This is specialist work and requires specialist SharePoint BI skills include cube analysis etc etc. Highly specialist, in demand and asking a premium. 

SharePoint Integrator

Again you will rarely see this title but there are a wide range of custom environments where SharePoint is integrated with other platforms such as Documentum, SAP, Peoplesoft etc. Therefore it will depend on what integration is required. Commonly this skillset will be requested in large implementations for global corporations on a project basis and therefore we'd expect this skill request to come through for a contract only. One may ask for someone who has deep understanding of integrating SAP and SharePoint in which case they would need to know iView or Duet and in this case its more about finding someone. If it also requires custom API development skills then you will be looking for a very specialist developer and as such again its more about supply and demand. These skills generally only currently exist within solution providers or SIs.


SharePoint Mobile Specialist

Deep knowledge of Groove (2007) and SharePoint workspaces (2010) including the management and relay servers. Very few people outside specialist partners have these skills and the best recommendation to any client is to seek out a specialist provider and not a contractor. It is highly unlikely there is anyone yet who can take this on as a dedicated FTE role though the requirement will be there in future. For making SharePoint accessible via a smartphone etc one should be talking to a SharePoint Solution Architect.


SharePoint Trainer/Instructor

For end clients then refer to the user adoption specialist first or the SharePoint Strategist. For training partners, MCTs (Microsoft certified Trainers) are typically required. For grey courses it will be open to negotiation. End user training is often managed via the business analyst and administrator using a variety of techniques including floorwalking.


SharePoint User Adoption Specialist


Only existing within a very few SharePoint partners such as Salem at present but the role deals with the strategy of how to get users to use the solutions in SharePoint. This should be dealt with at the beginning of the SharePoint cycle and throughout, but may be requested for clients who have failing SharePoint projects.

Important note: All our articles are copyrighted and cannot be used without our express permission, so please ask first.

PA Power ! An Effective Route to SharePoint Adoption

It is interesting how often the poor secretary is overlooked. These days some politically correct establishments have decided not to use the term secretary and in others, secretaries are viewed as role from the past and managers are more able to cope alone. Yet in most businesses we will still find plenty of receptionists and personal assistants.

The administrators (as we will call them) in most organisations have an excellent view of the business as a whole, have a superb personal contact network within the organisation, know how their managers feel and what they think, know what works and what does not, are typically IT literate, if not super users, and can influence senior management thinking at the flick of a mouse. Therefore we wonder why they are not used more often to gain SharePoint adoption within a business?

In our experience the personal assistants are the defenders of the their management teams, solid walls of granite which cannot be bypassed, resolutely loyal to the business cause and also extremely interested in anything at all that makes the working lives of their manager and themselves far more easy.

Demonstrating the merits of SharePoint meeting sites for meeting minutes and meeting agendas, attachments that are usually laboriously distributed via email or printed out etc quickly proves the value of SharePoint to an entrenched and busy audience. Save time for a PA and they will love you for ever.

We firmly recommend the strategy of creating a PA or administrator focus group, demonstrate a wide range of easy to use functionality, get their buy-in, show how SharePoint can save valuable time and enhance the lives of their managers and themselves and you are on to a sure fire win. You can be sure that they will then become your business champions, send positive messages through the grapevine and inspire confidence in the leaders above them. That way you cannot have a better audience to begin with.

Perhaps it is your turn to bring them a cup of coffee for once !