Developing a Business Requirements Strategy for SharePoint Infrastructure (SharePoint Summit Toronto 2014)
1 like623 views
The document discusses the importance of developing a business requirements strategy for SharePoint infrastructure, emphasizing the need to align technology solutions with business goals. It highlights common pitfalls in gathering requirements and offers a sample questionnaire to assess various aspects of the business environment and user needs. The presentation also addresses considerations for scalability, performance, and the impact of corporate culture on decision-making processes.
Developing a Business Requirements Strategy for SharePoint Infrastructure (SharePoint Summit Toronto 2014)
- 1. Developing a Business Requirements Strategy for SharePoint Infrastructure Brian Lalancette, Navantis
- 2. -OR-
- 3. What You Didn’t Know About Business Requirements for SharePoint Infrastructure Is Shocking!
- 4. www.sharepointsummit.org 4 Who Am I? About me: Consultant at www.navantis.com SharePoint infrastructure specialist PowerShell nerd • AutoSPInstaller • AutoSPSourceBuilder Lazy admin Even lazier blogger
- 5. www.sharepointsummit.org 5 Audience Poll Quick poll Business Users Power Users Admins Developers Executives *It’s OK to vote more than once (i.e. admit to being more than one) ☺
- 7. www.sharepointsummit.org 7 Business, Schmusiness Why gather requirements? Build something that actually fits * Save money; spend wisely on areas that count Focus on purpose Opens the conversation between stakeholders and IT
- 8. www.sharepointsummit.org 8 First Things Last “Where does it hurt?” What business problem are we trying to solve? What gap are we trying to fill? Learn a bit about the nature of the business *
- 9. www.sharepointsummit.org 9 Common Pitfalls Where does I.T. hurt? But tech is cool! Implement it for its own sake! “We’d rather not involve the business” * • (Customer have actually told me this) Cart before the proverbial horse • IT department makes the call on what tools to use Who’s serving whom? • Business users feel the pain of either: Bleeding edge technology Legacy, out-of-date platforms
- 11. www.sharepointsummit.org 11 Sample Questionnaire Overall approach Gauge your audience • Technical? • Decision Makers? • Power Users • End Users (wait, what?) “Zoom in/out” as required * Ultimately geared toward helping to make infrastructure decisions Assumes this is on-premises
- 12. www.sharepointsummit.org 12 Sample Questionnaire Questions Type of site (Intra/Extra/Inter) Number of employees • Number of SharePoint users (& growth rate!) • Concurrency rate (more on this later) Where are your employees/users? * Employee/user privilege model • Open by default vs. closed by default Will they be working with large files? * Usage patterns: • Collaboration / Consumption / Mix (ratio)
- 13. www.sharepointsummit.org 13 Sample Questionnaire (continued) More questions Services & service apps for SharePoint * • Business Data Connectivity • Managed Metadata • Office Web Apps • Visio Graphics Service • “We want it all” Oh really now… My Sites / Personal Sites • Fear & Confusion Governance Capacity Planning State of Active Directory? Who gets personal sites?
- 14. www.sharepointsummit.org 14 Sample Questionnaire (continued) Even more questions Uptime & Availability • How long can business tolerate a service outage? • At what times (if at all) can they tolerate outages? • Can they stand to lose any data? How many hours’ worth? * BUT • As downtime approaches zero, cost approaches infinity ☺ • Therefore balance a reasonable expectation of uptime with customer’s budget
- 15. www.sharepointsummit.org 15 Sample Questionnaire (continued) “Great, but we’re just upgrading…” Not “just” upgrading * Take this opportunity to review prior requirements (if they had even been identified/considered) DB attach, or manual/automated migration? Size of databases Custom and/or non-upgradeable solutions Move your clutter vs. opportunity to start fresh(er)
- 16. www.sharepointsummit.org 16 Sample Questionnaire (continued) Broader organizational concerns Risk Tolerance Desire for Innovation / Platform Currency Data Retention Requirements
- 18. www.sharepointsummit.org 18 Thoughts on Concurrency Concurrency is everything! MS likes to use “total number of users” • However it’s kind of meaningless as-is… * • Concurrency is usually expressed as a percentage • Average number of user sessions at a particular time • 10% as a rule of thumb (Intranets) • Internet (public-facing) concurrency much tougher to nail down • Do we anticipate peak periods of abnormally high concurrency?
- 19. www.sharepointsummit.org 19 Farm Sizing Farm size & capacity Implications of a farm that’s too small • Poor performance • Running out of space • Lots of warnings in CA that tend to be ignored Implications of a farm that’s too big • Staff required to operate and monitor • Patching (downtime, costs, overtime) x number of servers • Complexity outweights benefits
- 20. www.sharepointsummit.org 20 Mitigation Strategy (continued) Plan for: Future growth • Monitor performance & load proactively Scalability • Virtualization • Storage capacity (SANs, dynamically-expanding VHDX etc.) • Farm topologies • Be ready with tools, scripts etc. that will allow you to scale out the farm Staff readiness • Training * • Leave-behind materials
- 21. www.sharepointsummit.org 21 Mitigation Strategy But what if… IT has already made some of the decisions (prior to your involvement)? Corporate culture or policy makes it unfeasible to interview business representatives? You’ve exhausted all avenues?
- 22. www.sharepointsummit.org 22 Summary Summary Business is the reason we’re in business If you can’t think of a business case for implementing x, why are you doing it? Think about the goals & purpose behind SharePoint farm size & design (and cost)
- 25. www.sharepointsummit.org 25 Contact Links & References More reading & contact info Twitter: @brianlala Blog: http://spinsiders.com/brianlala Blog: http://blog.navantis.com/author/brianlalancette Some guest posts: • http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2014/02/01/wee kend-scripter-using-autospinstaller-and-autospsourcebuilder.aspx • http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2010/03/23/hey- scripting-guy-march-23-2010.aspx • https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/itpro/Pages/Whats-in- Store-for-AutoSPInstaller-v-Next.aspx
- 26. Thank you for your attention! This presentation will be available on the Toronto SharePoint Summit web site a few days after the event.
- 27. Please rate this session! Fill out the survey for a chance to win a Surface SESSION 5.1 Developing a Business Requirements Strategy for SharePoint Infrastructure