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 :)
