SPSToronto - Future-Proofing Your SharePoint Strategy

Editor's Notes

• #11: A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a vision (or objectives).What is our winningcondition for SharePoint? What is the objective?
• #14: Because TV is always true.
• #19: Have you seen the new DirectTV commercials? No? Then you too are probably working too late and don’t watch enough TV. :P
• #38: “When you don’t know where you are going any road will get you there.” – Lewis Carroll
• #47: You take the estimated value and divide that by the estimated level of difficulty then times (*) it by 100 to get the percentage of ROI.
• #50: They need to understand both the value and the difficulty for each objective – which can only be achieved when objectives are specific enough and prioritized.
• #57: Just like in our IT projects it wasn’t really one launch due to the complexity. It was multiple launches to get us on the right trajectory towards our goal/objectives.
• #58: If you think dealing with Attorneys and users is a challenge imagine having to plan for hard Martian soil, extreme temperatures and storms.
• #59: Even after it had landed it had to ‘travel’ away from the landing site in order to start taking samples/getting a better understanding of the area.
• #60: Even after reaching our destination there is still the hard work of gathering the data. Then the hard work of verifying and validating the data.
• #66: Look at launch and the initial 3 months worth of missions compares to the number they actually had!
• #67: It’s critical to understand the importance of not just launch, but the mini launches that adjust our trajectory, and the travel and importance of communication, and finally the landing and it’s importance.
• #72: A strategy must specify what action will happen in each contingent state… e.g. if the opponent does A, then take action B, whereas if the opponent does C, take action D.
• #75: Why are we using SharePoint within our Enterprise?What are we currentlyusing SharePoint for within our Enterprise?What are the future uses for SharePoint within our Enterprise?How is SharePoint helping us achieve our business goals?What are our SharePoint objectives and their priority?What are our SharePoint initiatives and their priority?How do our SharePoint initiatives align with our SharePoint objectives?What are ways we can reduce inefficiencies and duplication?What groups are doing similar initiatives and how can we help?What are the related systems, applications and services we have within our enterprise?How is the business prioritizing SharePoint initiatives?Who are the people or key areas of the business involved in setting the strategic direction for our SharePoint implementation? What areas of the business offer the most opportunity for growth?How are you communicating strategic changes or initiatives related to SharePoint in your organization?
• #76: What are the known current SharePoint Initiatives?What are the known future SharePoint initiatives?Am I using all the features our organization is paying for?Are we using any of the features incorrectly?What are the related business applicationsandservices?Do any contain duplicate features/functionality?Are any being retired/eliminated in the future?What are the technical objectives for SharePoint within the organization?How are these technical objectives prioritized?What are our current and future licensing plans with SharePoint?Do you have a communication plan?When do communications occur?What must the communications contain?Who are the contacts for key responsibilities?
• #77: Document management roles. Firms should ensure that the planning process incorporates feedback of key stakeholders, that the right team is in place to implement the solution, and that stakeholders who will participate in document management processes are identified. Document usage. After firms classify who works on documents, they should determine the types of documents that practitioners work on and how those documents are used. Document organization. Firms should plan how to organize documents into site collections, sites, libraries, folders, and subfolders; when to use to loosely structured document libraries for quick document creation and collaboration; and when to use a Records Center for long-term storage. Content types. Firms should classify and rationalize the wide array of content types currently in use across their various practices. This part of the planning process is an essential step in organizing documents and enforcing consistency across the firm. Workflows. Firms should plan how documents will move from one practitioner to another as people collaborate. Establishing and codifying several baseline document workflows enables firms to embed best practices, reduce risk, and increase efficiencies.
• #78: How are you allocating costs?
• #79: Do you have clearly defined Governance teams, committees or boards?Are the roles and responsibilities of the membership clearly defined?Is all of the membership engaged?Does the membership rotate?How often are your members getting together?What are the reasons your Governance teams, committees or boards get together?Are the outcomes of these meetings actionable?Do you have a Governance Site (and Governance Plan)?What is within your GovernanceSite?
• #80: Process Details:What is the name of the process?Who are the actors of the process?What are the systems involved in the process?What are the pre-conditions for this process taking place?What are the post conditions after this process has taken place?Is the information reviewed after?How often?For what reason?How long does the process take right now?If there are outliers or exceptions to the typical duration what are the causes for this?How frequently does this process take place? (Frequency)How many times has this process taken place? (Volume) How important is that historic data? Process Deep Dive:What are the existing pain points in the process?Who owns each step? Is there a clear owner? (You can include system, or exclude a step if it’s not part of the identified flow of events, but is supplemental).When are people notified and who is notified in each step?Especially important on steps that require an action.What are the ‘exceptions’ in the process?Whenever a user declines a step in the process the workflow ends.When presented with ‘decline’ or ‘approve’ it is typically best practice to present an option for giving a comment on decline. (Or pre-defined reasons.)Does this decline have any clear pre-defined reasons?Where in the process are there escalation paths?What are these paths?What are the existing documents or artifacts used/leveraged within the process?What are the related processes?Related tasks?What is the process? (Process mapping activities.)What are the permissions and privacy considerations throughout the process?Questions:What does XYZ mean?This should always be asked even if you think you understand the acronym to ensure it’s not misinterpreted.
• #81: Who is responsible for what when it comes to SharePoint infrastructure?Do they have a backup?Do they have the knowledge and training they need?Have you ever deviatedfrom the default settings? Why and when?How are you monitoring SharePoint?Do you know when a content DB’s size is approaching it’s recommended limit?Do you know when the site count of a site collection is approaching it’s recommended limit?Do you know when the site collection count in a content database is approaching it’s recommended limit?What quotas have you configured for SharePoint?How do you handle requests for a larger quota? What is the maximum quota?Do you have errors in your event logs?Do you have errors in your SharePoint logs?Have you changed the default settings for storing logs?Do you have errors in your SQL logs?How much space to grow do each of your logs have?How many servers do you have in your farm? (and possibly how many farms?)How many web applications do you have in your farm?How many site collections do you have?How many databases do you have?How large are your databases? How many SQL Server Instances do you have?How many users are using your SharePoint site collections?How many requests per second are you seeing?How many sites do you have?How many documents do you have?What is the highest document size?What is the average document size?What are your resource throttling settings?What other technologies are you using with SharePoint?Are you using ISA or Forefront?Are your users using Micrsoft Groove or SharePoint Workspace?What is the current version of Microsoft Office you are using?Are you using Office Communication Server or Lync?Are you using Microsoft System Center products? Which ones?
• #82: What is your Disaster Recovery plan for your SharePoint implementation?Do you perform a fire drills based on your plan? When was the last one and how often do you do them?How do you provide single file recovery? (version control, recycling bin, DPM, etc)How do you provide single or multiplesite recovery?How do you provide server recovery?How do you provide data center recovery?Are you storing excess or unnecessary (unused) data in your SharePoint farm?What are the costs of this storage?Why is it being stored?
• #83: How is SharePoint performance?What are the bandwidth costs associated with SharePoint?What are the costs associated with transferring redundant data around your farm?What are my slowest performing pages?How heavy are my SharePoint pages?Are you using caching in your SharePoint implementation?Are you using Output Caching?Are you using Disk Based Caching?Are you using Object Caching?Are you using IIS compression?Are you monitoring SQL Server Latency?Is your latency 10 milliseconds or less for the Temp Database?Is your latency 10 milliseconds or less for the Search Database?Is your latency 20 milliseconds or less for the Database Log File?Do you have pre-negotiated SLAs for first time load of a site, subsequent loads of a site, and performance at remote locations?
• #84: What kind of SharePoint support do you currently provide?Do you provide help material such as Manuals, Course Guidebooks, Workbooks, How To, Tutorials, or Demonstrations?How do you train users on SharePoint?How do you currently provision your sites?How do you determine where each site should live?Who owns the site and who supports the site?How do you communicate new features, initiatives, or changes to SharePoint to your users?How many SharePoint support requests do you currently get?How are these categorized?How are these assigned and escalated?How many are effectively responded to?How many are closed with success?Do you leverage/contribute to an internal knowledgebase for SharePoint support?Do you have clearly defined SLAs for support and problem resolution?Do you offer face to face learning or unstructured/semi-structured environments for learning? (Lunch and learns, after hours discussions, communities etc)
• #85: Do you have a site map that represents the current site structures?Does this clearly indicate recommended containment hierarchy?Do you have a site map that defines future site structures?Are you using Content Types?Are you using metadata to help make content easier to organize and find?Are you using site columns?Are you using and managing Term Sets?Do you have tagging guidelines?Are you managing keywords?Are you using and managing Site Directories?Do you have classifications based on type of use?Communications based (publishing) portal/sites/collections?Team based collaboration sites/collections?Application/services based sites/collections?Are you checking for dead links?How well is your site structured?Can people find what they are looking for?
• #86: How secure is your SharePoint environment?Do you have PII (Personally Identifiable Information) in your environment? Is it secured and audited?How well are permissions managed in your SharePoint environment?Have you ever deviated from SharePoint’s default security levels?In what site collections?What was the reasoning/need behind creating your own security levels?How can security be improved in your SharePoint environment?How can you more effectively monitor, manage, and maintain security in your SharePoint environment?Do you have separate/specific site collections or web applications for confidential data which are more tightly controlled, audited, and managed?
• #87: Do you have clearly defined Development Standards?What third party products are we using in our SharePoint environment?Where are they available? Who can use them?What is the status of these non-Microsoft products?Are there newer versions available?How is custom code performing within our SharePoint environment?Are you disposing of SharePoint objects correctly?Are you using best practices when querying or working with SharePoint objects?Do you know how many workflows have been created within your SharePoint environment?Do you know what they do?Do you know who owns them?Do you know what they were developed using? (SharePoint Designer? Visual Studio? Third Party Product?)Who is using SharePoint Designer?How do you test your SharePoint environment when an update is made to it?When new code is added or a third party product?How are you storing older versions of configurations, code and compiled components?
• #88: Is your SharePoint implementation part of an overall enterprisetechnology plan?What are the current systems and applications in place?What are the application and system lifecycles?Is there duplicated content that is contained in other systems or applications and not just within SharePoint?How is this content kept synchronized when updates are made to it?Can data stored in other systems provide additional value to your SharePoint business solutions? Can it give added context to SharePoint content?What are already integrated?How are they integrated?What are not integrated?Why haven’t they been integrated?Are there ways to reduce user disruption by providing more single sign on opportunities?
• #89: How do you share the benefit of existing SharePoint solutions in your organization?Does this include user built SharePoint solutions?What is the SharePoint skill level of your users?Do you have user stories on how people are currently using SharePoint successfully?Have you performed interviews or surveys to help understand how people are using SharePoint or how specific SharePoint solutions can be improved?How many people are using your SharePoint implementation? Are you reviewing SharePoint Usage Statistics on a Regular Basis?How many are using a specific site?How many are using specific documents?What times of the week are they using specific sites or documents?Are there patterns that can be identified to help in determining the best time for updates or additions?Is your SharePoint accessible externally or via mobile devices?How usable are your SharePoint solutions or implementation? Have you performed usability assessments?How has your SharePoint implementation been branded?Does it have a unique name for referencing?What are your theme and styling guidelines?How does your SharePoint implementation work across browsers?What about upcoming browsers?What are the accessibility concerns in your current SharePoint implementation?How can this be improved?Do you have usage policies defined?Have your users signed off or acknowledged these policies?Do you enforce these policies?How often are these usage policies assessed and updated?
• #90: Have you identified and defined user personas?Is your SharePoint accessible externally?Is your SharePoint being used on mobile devices?How is the user experience?How has your SharePoint implementation been branded?What are your theme and styling guidelines?How does your SharePoint implementation work across browsers?What about upcoming browsers?What are the accessibility concerns in your current SharePoint implementation?How can this be improved?How do you make navigation changes in your SharePoint implementation?Is your current navigation effective?Have you performed card sorting exercises?Have you performed the ‘blind’ test?
• #91: While SharePoint internal environments support a ‘mobile’ friendly mode the same feature doesn’t work for anonymous users on public facing websites. In addition to this there is the challenge of much smaller resolutions which SharePoint has not been optimized for. Even the webpages developed within SharePoint are large and according to some experts ‘bloated’ with additional content that often is not applicable for anonymous users. There are workarounds for all of these issues (and more), but most require some level of customization or code. So while optimizing SharePoint sites for mobile and tablet devices is possible, it isn’t necessarily easy.What does Microsoft currently have to say about this? “Microsoft SharePoint 2010 supports several modern, standards based, XHTML 1.0 compliant browsers such as Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.6 and Safari 4.x as detailed in the “Plan browser support (SharePoint Server 2010)” on Microsoft TechNet. It explains in detail which features work and which do not across the browsers and is the most up to date browser support information. The mobile versions of Safari browser on the Apple iPhone OS (used by the iPhone and iPad) have not been tested by Microsoft, and there may be issues using them with SharePoint 2010.”There are quite a few documented issues (almost all of which relate to the mobile browser and the fact that SharePoint 2010 has not been designed to behave with all touch based interfaces) which are a good reason for concern when many businesses are seeing considerable growth and adoption of tablets. According to the JP Morgan Analyst Group “The tablet market is expected to grow to $35 billion by 2012”. Let me assure you that a big contributor to that growth will be enterprise customers who use SharePointWhat is the mobile experience of your SharePoint site?Have you optimized the site for smaller resolutions?What mobile browsers do you support?Is your organization adopting tablet PCs (iPads)?What is the tablet experience of your SharePoint site?What support do you provide for remote workers?What are the offline and synchronization options your organization is providing?Is SharePoint available outside of the firewall for employees?When a user receives an email linking to a SharePoint document on their phone can they download that document? What is this mobile email and SharePoint experience like?
• #92: While SharePoint internal environments support a ‘mobile’ friendly mode the same feature doesn’t work for anonymous users on public facing websites. In addition to this there is the challenge of much smaller resolutions which SharePoint has not been optimized for. Even the webpages developed within SharePoint are large and according to some experts ‘bloated’ with additional content that often is not applicable for anonymous users. There are workarounds for all of these issues (and more), but most require some level of customization or code. So while optimizing SharePoint sites for mobile and tablet devices is possible, it isn’t necessarily easy.What does Microsoft currently have to say about this? “Microsoft SharePoint 2010 supports several modern, standards based, XHTML 1.0 compliant browsers such as Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.6 and Safari 4.x as detailed in the “Plan browser support (SharePoint Server 2010)” on Microsoft TechNet. It explains in detail which features work and which do not across the browsers and is the most up to date browser support information. The mobile versions of Safari browser on the Apple iPhone OS (used by the iPhone and iPad) have not been tested by Microsoft, and there may be issues using them with SharePoint 2010.”There are quite a few documented issues (almost all of which relate to the mobile browser and the fact that SharePoint 2010 has not been designed to behave with all touch based interfaces) which are a good reason for concern when many businesses are seeing considerable growth and adoption of tablets. According to the JP Morgan Analyst Group “The tablet market is expected to grow to $35 billion by 2012”. Let me assure you that a big contributor to that growth will be enterprise customers who use SharePointWhat is the mobile experience of your SharePoint site?Have you optimized the site for smaller resolutions?What mobile browsers do you support?Is your organization adopting tablet PCs (iPads)?What is the tablet experience of your SharePoint site?What support do you provide for remote workers?What are the offline and synchronization options your organization is providing?Is SharePoint available outside of the firewall for employees?When a user receives an email linking to a SharePoint document on their phone can they download that document? What is this mobile email and SharePoint experience like?
• #93: Are you using custom search scopes?Are you using people search?Are you checking what queries resulted in failure (no click through or 0 results)?Are you using best bets?Have you defined synonyms?Do you allow users to search non SharePoint data from within SharePoint? If so what data?Are you using hit highlighting?Have you made organizational enhancements to the noise words file and/or the thesaurus file?Have you defragmented your search database(s)?
• #94: What does a one star versus a five star rating mean in your organization?What are acceptable tags?Are negative tags allowed? Are there examples of effective tags available?When should a user tag and when shouldn’t they?If content has already been tagged is it valuable to tag it again?Is it okay to tag content if that content already has a column (or metadata) value that represents that tag?Are you using Status Updates?What are acceptable status updates? Are there examples of effective status updates available?What is acceptable About Me information for a user profile? Are there examples of effective About Me descriptions available?What is an acceptable user profile picture?
• #97: Are you using keywords, key phrases, and a description that reflects each pages content?Are you using Robots Exclusion Standard (robots.txt)?Are you placing your content higher up in the page (to improve search engine processing).Are you ensuring alt and titletags are always filled on things like images?Are you using descriptive text in your hyperlinks?Are you using descriptive page titles?Are you automatically updating the sitemap (helps search engines crawl or discover pages on the site).Are you adjusting the Search Visibility for sites or pages you don’t want crawled?
• #117: A lot of this can seem daunting and I know one of the hardest things is figuring out how to do some of the things I have shown today. If you are interested in further training or assistance please let me know. Based on the number of people who are interested and the areas of interest we can schedule further training sessions to help everyone better use the SharePoint portal.It's our commitment to you that we will continue to hear your feedback and identify the issues. I encourage you to give us feedback during the coming months, and we will continue to deliver more and more functionality, more and more guidance to help you be successful with your application of SharePoint.Thank You for Reading/Listening