Successful SharePoint Projects, Myth or Reality?

I wrote an article and published it over on the recently launched ‘SharePoint Magazine by Arno Nel.

With the growing interest in deploying SharePoint (MOSS and WSS) across all manor of businesses and organisations, the article looks at the general topic areas they should look into to avoid disappointment and ensure their investment reaps the expected rewards.

Drawing upon 7 or so years in winning and managing SharePoint projects into medium to large businesses, hopefully you will find it a useful ‘heads up’.

Regards,

Andrew Walmsley

Director

WorkShares

www.workshares.co.uk

Choosing the right SharePoint resources

In addition to this article I wrote recently, SharePoint Consultant/Developer Required….No!, I also responded to a posting on the ever popular LinkedIn site called ‘What skills are you looking for when hiring/recruiting a SharePoint Consultant?’.

Since receiving positive comments from others following this posting, it has be referred to in others work, including that of the white paper by Julie Pfahl, of Syntapa.

An interesting and although not exhaustive piece of research, nevertheless does highlight some important considerations businesses need to work through as part of their resource planning for a SharePoint based project.

Regards,

Andrew Walmsley

Director

WorkShares

Need offline capability with SharePoint Content?

If you use Microsoft’s SharePoint Services, you’ll be pleased to hear there are simple and affordable ways of taking your content offline, perhaps for your remote workers.

A much unheard of, but in my view powerful collaborative feature is that of Outlook 2007’s capability to  take anything in a SharePoint list or document library  (they are for all intents and purposes one in the same) offline and sync up upon your return to the office.

Simply pull the drop down ‘Actions’ option from the list or library concerned, select ‘Connect to Outlook’ and follow the instructions:

You will be asked basically to confirm your request:

And after syncing, your documents will be located inside Outlook for you to take away, update and or just read.

You do need to be using Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0 AND Outlook 2007 for this to work, but is I think I great partnership for people whom work away from the office a lot.

Other tools out there are available at different prices/functionality including Colligio’s ‘free’ reader only product – nice for just viewing content offline.

WSS V3 Search just got better!

One of the limitations with Windows SharePoint Services search is that the search at the top of your site it is limited to the site collection in terms of the data it is able to retrieve. This is frustrating if you have designed and deployed best practice methods for managing multiple site collections to better manage your data, recovery and content segregation.

What this meant to some users whom deployed several site collections is that they had to go to each ‘top level site’ and search from there to get results or purchase a 3rd party tool. It also didn’t search other storage repositories, web sites, file shares, etc.

Well no more, with the release of Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express (SSE): More details here from Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/serverproducts/searchserverexpress/default.aspx

Oh, and by the way, it is FREE!

There are limitations with the express product, one of which is that it can only be installed on 1 machine, hence not scaleable for farm deployments, and recommend you review the detailed planning considerations/upgrade paths before you deploy as adding such powerful indexing/search capabilities will create large index files that need to be managed and considered as part of your environment.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb891933.aspx

Regards,

WorkShares Team.

SharePoint Consultant/Developer Required….No!

At WorkShares and with my wider work with others, I often get enquires from recruitment agencies either pushing the CV of an ‘experienced SharePoint Developer/Consultant’ they have or asking if they can provide me with an exclusive contract to supply such resources to my business. Similarly, a quick review of the job sites out there also advertise such roles and confirms my suspicions.

I am unsure whether this is because businesses are demanding such roles due to budget constraints or is it more likely that agencies are advising that the two roles can/should be combined and this is what they need…

The former I can understand, the latter is nothing short of bad advice/bad practice and speaks of a complete lack of understanding about the skill sets required and demands placed upon the different roles that should make up a SharePoint project team.

Recruiters  have no, I repeat, NO real world experience of the skills and experience need to  design, build implement and support SharePoint projects. So why trust them when they push critical roles combined into one person on a project that is typically high profile within businesses? On what basis can you trust their advice?

Bluntly, they get paid put bodies on seats, which just so happens to be a SharePoint project but could easily be an Exchange migration or network upgrade project. To them, it seems to matter little in terms of the way they are recruited. Simplistic, ‘ticks in boxes’ is a term often that springs to mind when I think about the methods I am sure many agencies employ to source and push CVs to businesses. Though it has to be said a smaller minority are somewhat more sophisticated in their approach to vetting and promote individuals.

This is still however a growing concern for someone like me whom has been involved with SharePoint since 2001 when the product was first released and have since been involved in over 130 SharePoint projects to date. Microsoft SharePoint related deployments are growing, but the availability of good resources and critically the quality of the approach to resourcing of such projects seem to be in decline and isn’t meeting the demands needed by such projects.

For example. If you’re about to attempt a house build, you wouldn’t in your dreams get a brick layer to do the electrics, or a plumber to architect the plans for the house! You would end up with a disaster on your hands, with poor quality build, budget overruns and a project delivered late which completely misses it’s objectives and expectations from the business users. You would end up with a house with no windows, core supporting architecture made of MDF wood, 6 bathrooms, 1 bedroom, no lounge and a roof which leaked and electrics/plumbing which were not built as you ran out of money!

My advice to recruiters is that you have a responsibility to advise your clients of the correct mix of skills they require and to not try and push such critical roles combined into one. It’s in your interest to do this because a successful project will lead to more business…the wrong resource on a project will lead to a less successful project and arguably this will reflect on your organisation from providing the resource.

My advice to organisations about to embark on SharePoint project is to form your team carefully, budget appropriately and manage expectations with the business from day 1. If you seek external resources via recruitment agencies, choose them careful and to challenge them about such combined roles. Those that push Developer/Consultant combination CVs will bring an incredibly high risk to your project deliverables and you should plan, plan and plan again the design and importantly the resourcing of your projects carefully.

Regards,

Andrew Walmsley

Managing Director

WorkShares Limited

SharePoint Project Management Solution at Kingston Communications – Case Study

Kingston Communications - Project Management Workspace Solution
WorkShares assisted Kingston Communications with the delivery of a Project Management Workspace Solution, to help them better manage their large programme of work underway within the organisation, affecting several of its businesses in the UK.
The solution utilised the Microsoft® SharePoint® collaborative platform, via a hosted arrangement from Mistral Internet (owned by Kingston Communications). WorkShares provided the design & build consultancy and included knowledge transfer & training prior to making the service live.
Based around their bespoke deployment of the PRINCE 2 methodology, the reusable nature of the solution allows Kingston Communications to provide a central ‘Programme’ workspace in which to then manage the projects, each with its own workspace, but also utilising a consistent set of features and functions.

For the complete case study click on the below link.
Kingston Communications Case Study

Regards,

WorkShares Team.

What is SharePoint?

What is SharePoint?

A question which still comes up from time to time, even though the product(s) have been around now for some time! I thought I would re-post this to help those new to the SharePoint world….:-)

Read the rest of this entry »

Hosted SharePoint Case Studies Released

WorkShares has gained a lot of experience of working with many well known organisations across the UK, from small businesses, start-ups, to larger enterprises; all of whom have had a common need to provide collaborative solutions for their staff, suppliers or clients alike.

We have provided a few case study samples of our work below as examples of the scope and scale of work we are involved with and hope you find them useful.
CJColeman - SharePoint Extranet Solution
WorkShares assisted C J Coleman with a project to introduce an extranet type web presence for its a specialist group of clients across the UK. The solution utilised Microsoft® Windows SharePoint® Services, via a hosted service arrangement from Mistral Internet.  WorkShares provided the design & build consultancy and included knowledge transfer & training, prior to making the service live in March 2007.
The reusable nature of the solution will allow C J Coleman to maximise their investment in the hosted SharePoint platform and provide not only a collaborative platform for its this initial group of clients but also a platform they can re-use for other client markets in the future.
For the complete case study click on the below link.
C J Coleman Case Study

Capita Business Services - SharePoint Project Management & Shared WorkSpace Solution
WorkShares provided Capita Business Services with a combined Project Management Office & Shared Workspace solution to help manage their multi-million pound Business Transformation Programme of work with a key local government client.

Utilising Microsoft’s latest SharePoint® technology, the solution provides Capita Business Services and its client, the London Borough of Harrow, with access to a collaborative areas for the creation, storage and retrieval of key documents and information.

WorkShares provided SharePoint advice, design & build consultancy on the solution, which is hosted on a robust, dedicated server environment.
For the complete case study click on the below link.
Capita Business Services Case Study

WorkShares Team

SharePoint Trial – Free!

WorkShares are offering new customers the ability to trial Microsoft’s latest SharePoint software via ‘Try before you buy’ basis for up to 1 month free of charge.

This trial service is ideal for organisations wishing to review the powerful document management and collaborative features provided by SharePoint. Ideal scenarios are Company Extranets, Employee Extranets, Customer Portals, Project Management Workspaces or just general areas for collaborating on documents in a safe, secure and easy to use area, accessible from home, work or any location with internet access and a internet browser software.

For more information get in touch here to let us know your contact details and a suitable time to call to discuss your requirements.

Upon successful trial, users will be given the option to move to a shared service or dedicated server environment.

BCS Registration

Andrew Walmsley of WorkShares Limited has just joined the British Computer Society (BCS), which is a leading professional body for those working in IT.

Regards,

WorkShares Team.