The SharePoint Journey
- 3. SharePoint without purpose is pointless. You are not actually installing SharePoint, you are creating a system to do something functional and SharePoint is the medium in which to achieve that goal. The word SharePoint is generally banned during Requirements Gathering workshops and Stakeholder meetings and remember the client has all the answers, they just do not realise it at the time.
- 4. Why are we changing the existing systems Can SharePoint actually deliver the proposed solution OOTB Developing the additional features, do we really have the skills on board Development is generally a journey into the unknown, how long it will it really take GAP Analysis and what is really missing Don’t talk about great looking sites, talk about really functional Sites
- 5. We now have the choice between Cloud and On- Premises but whatever the choice, licensing costs and your existing IT and support infrastructure will be a major influence on deciding the new Systems and which Office 365 Plan to purchase. On-Premises Requires Servers Client Access Licence Application Software Data Storage Redundancy Backup Staging Farms Development and Sandpit Office 365 Includes 5 licences for Office Applications SharePoint Enterprise Office 365 Exchange Lync Access to Yammer (Requires Additional Licence) Federated Services Disk Storage
- 6. Which or your sponsors are decision makers, find out who you are dealing with and try to understand what they expect from the project, why are they in this role and how can you get the best out of them. Find out from the Audience the role that best fits, Decision Makers (Financial / Functional), Project Managers, Team Sponsors, Developers, Product Support, Application Support, Architecture, training and documentation and discuss their input in a SharePoint project.
- 7. Understand the Methodology in which the Client team member is communicating and how familiar are they with the process. Prince (Projects in Controlled environments) ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) Agile Unified Process (AUP); Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) TOGAF The Open Group Architecture Framework ISO (International Organization for Standardization)
- 13. Information Architecture, one of the first words I learnt at the beginning of my SharePoint journey. Information Architecture will translate into Content Types which are the building blocks for grouping columns which are used in Libraries and Lists. In reality you never create a column at the list or library level you simply configure a content type and add it to the List or Library
- 14. You can have a functional Layer (Getting it to work) and the Business layer (the control implied) where governance must be a part of the requirements gathering and integrated into the design. Security Auditing Reliability Usability Supportability
- 15. An individual artefact cannot be described as anything in particular but encapsulates everything as the individual parts of your architectural design.
- 16. Pillar 1 - Corporate Strategy Pillar 2 - Change Management Process Pillar 3 - Back Office Administration Pillar 4 - Training Pillar 5 - Clear Ownership Pillar 6 - Technical Development Process Pillar 7 – Ongoing Maintenance Tasks http://ezinearticles.com/?Seven-Pillars-of- SharePoint&id=4672281
- 17. Once the Sites have been built the need for reporting arises and the client has most likely seen the promotional material outlining the great reports that SharePoint provides but this cannot be done on the fly. Business Intelligence is a major topic which baffles most IT technicians and requires the enterprise version before you even start. Reporting must be a part of your requirements gathering process.
- 18. Installing SharePoint is a complex process and you must be able to document and replay this procedure exactly, you will also add servers and change the topology as your Farm grows. Two Codeplex tools which I use extensively are AutoSPInstaller (Brian Lalancette / Andrew Woodward) and AutoSPInstallerGUI (Ivan Josipovic)
- 19. A SharePoint project will never close, it just keeps going on and on which makes sense, so remember you have started the SharePoint Journey and at some point you must Close the initial project and move to a Change Management Process. Why is this important?
- 20. Questions