SharePoint State of the Union

By Eric Riz

August 21, 2012 —  (Page 2 of 3)
To begin the conversation, bring your business unit leaders and as many senior staff possible together in order to discuss the current state of your environment. Be sure that these people are the decision makers, people who are aware of the current state and can provide insight toward the technical road map and plan for SharePoint. Involving the wrong people would be a critical mistake at this point. The goal of the meeting is to get a baseline for your corporate usage. Once you have that, only then can you begin your analysis of SharePoint 2010 or 2013 and determine whether an upgrade is right for your business, when it will be right for your business, and who will be required to get it done right.

Start the meeting by stating your purpose: to discuss the current state of your usage of SharePoint. Note that I have specifically not used the word “environment” here, which is typically used as a more technical term to discuss infrastructure, and you don’t want you attendees mixing up the message and purpose of the meeting. Additionally, you are potentially trying to uncover some of the unknowns about how SharePoint is being used by the business, so using more generic terminology will promote a better conversation.

Begin by asking the questions that will formulate the picture of your usage; ask your attendees one by one how they are using SharePoint, how it impacts the operation of their department on a daily basis, and what custom applications they may have built to help along the way. Note that a custom application means different things to different people. Some believe that a custom view is a new application, while others will see their custom-built Web Part as their customized piece. Either way, this application inventory is a very important step as you begin to consider upgrading.

Now that you have gone around the room and discussed usage, everyone will have heard different scenarios and expectations of SharePoint. This conversation typically includes many common scenarios and a few departments that are doing extraordinary things with SharePoint, all of which are important to long-term governance and adoption, regardless of the version you are using or looking to upgrade to. Be sure to ask some tough questions through the conversation, such as why SharePoint is being used in a certain way, or how a Web Part was developed.



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