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 :)
Wednesday 26 October 2011
Thursday 2 June 2011
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 !
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 !
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:
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday 20 April 2011
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)