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10/27/2009

SPC 2010 - What Goes On In Vegas Does Not Stay In Vegas

Upon heading out to the Boston Logan Airport for the SharePoint User Conference in Las Vegas this past week, my expectation was to reconnect with a large number of business acquaintances, have some fun in Vegas and learn more about SharePoint 2010 beyond my current exposure via the Product Management team. With a sold out crowd of over 8,000 people in attendance, I sensed the event would contain more chatter and a bit less substance. I’m pleased to report that my expectations were dead wrong.

The show’s stars proved to be 1) SharePoint 2010 and 2) the practical and mature uses of SharePoint to solve real business problems and 3) the shear mass of 3^rd party add-on products/partners for the platform.

First, the substantially enhanced functionality in SharePoint 2010 demonstrated that the product management team was really listening and reacting with relevant enhancements. The inclusion of “Enterprise Content Types”, enhanced “SharePoint Designer Workflow” functionality, Silverlight’s rich interface, greatly enhanced Records Management capabilities, substantially improved web-content management and the global use of the now popular “Ribbon” represented a small sampling of new functionality. Additional excitement was garnered around the introduction of a much richer “Social Networking” capability and Microsoft has substantially upgraded the Business Data Catalogs (BDCs) with the next incarnation of LoB (Line of Business) systems connectivity titled - “Business Connectivity Services”. Coupled with the many functional enhancements was the underlying theme of greatly heightened scalability and large file support.

I also had the opportunity to spend some time with Steve Ballmer’s keynote companions, Jeff Teper (MS Corporate Vice President for Office SharePoint Server) and Tom Rizzo (SharePoint Director). I also met with a number of the key product management team members such as Ryan DuGuid, Tricia Bush, Evan Richman, Art Bettingrue, Annemarie Callahan and Mitch Gatchalian. In talking with them, you could sense three underlying themes; 1) relief – to finally be ready for this conference was a huge ordeal and one that seemed to be very intense, 2) pride – SharePoint 2010 means no longer having to say “I’m sorry” as a result of the enhanced feature set in SharePoint 2010 and finally, 3) real-world experiences that allowed them to recognize the magnitude of the effort associated with successfully designing, deploying and supporting SharePoint. For this team, there was no unrealistic panacea, but instead, a grounded perspective on what it would take to see SharePoint projects succeed. They did well!

Second, there were a collection of great case studies from companies such as Kraft, Deloitte, Jones Lang LaSalle, Electronic Arts and so many others. The underlying theme with all of these presentations; SharePoint was not merely a “broad collaboration platform” for the masses (to quote some well-known, but out-of-the-know analysts). Instead, it was being used to solve a number of deep and pressing challenges that are now considered mission critical business functions. The inherent ease of use, coupled with creative thinking and strategic planning allowed these solutions to come together on the SharePoint platform and the results demonstrated were quite impressive.

Third, I would be remiss if I didn’t comment on the sea of 3^rd party add-on providers that were on the exhibit floor and “sharing” in the excitement around SharePoint continued momentum. The usual suspects such as traditional ECM providers such as EMC, OpenText and OnBase were in attendance. Their pitch sounds fairly similar in that they position themselves as the back end repository to SharePoint for Records and transactional document processing. My personal opinion is that they need to further evolve their value proposition as more information continues to be stored directly and permanently into SharePoint repositories. Other key supporting players such as KnowledgeLake, ConceptSearching, Idera, K2, SchemaLogic (also sponsors of www.sharepointgovernance.org) were there in force and they were well in tune with SharePoint’s continued success and their heightened value add. Finally, some relative new comers, some newer than others, made the scene and were aptly rewarded for their presence. These included companies such as StoragePoint (Blue Thread, Inc.) for their remote blob storage, X₂0 for streaming SharePoint to TV channels and other mediums and Pyxis|Mobile for integration with mobile phones. The list was long and many were very interesting. These were just a few that really caught my eye.

With all of the positive commentary stated, there are still areas that need to be further addressed and refined. For example, the absence of support for physical records management means customization or 3^rd party product add-ons. One day, I do hope they include support for columns with parent-child relationships. There were some other items that I’d still like to see improved; however, when assessing the SharePoint 2010 balance sheet, the product’s assets far outweigh its liabilities and for this reason, I believe that SharePoint’s dominance in the ECM community will only gain more ground for the foreseeable future. Nice job Microsoft!

10/18/2009

What Makes The SharePoint Community Uniquely Special and Why The "Anti-Communitists" Need A Wake-up Call

Good afternoon world,

As I sit in my hotel room prior to going down to the opening reception of the SharePoint User Conference here in Vegas, I ask myself what is so uniquely special about this group of people attending the SharePoint conference.

And when asking myself this question, I find that the answer can be summed up by the word "community". For those that are living it and breathing it as we are here are at Corridor, they know what I mean. To quote my good friend Randy Kahn (smartest RM/compliance/e-Discovery) guy I know, SharePoint is imperfect. Yet, despite its imperfections, its overwhelming ease of use and broad adoption inspire people to park their :stuff" here. And because of this intense parking of stuff, many of us have come to see what is good and what is bad about SharePoint.

For the good, we celebrate it and speak about how it can solve real problems and do so in meaningful and intuitive ways. For the bad, we collectively help each other out as good members of a community should. And because of this on-going collaboration, a vested interest by community members continues to self-propogate. And this is all good.

However, there are also the "anti-communitists" a very real sounding, but non-existent phrase which I made up. These are the people who simply refuse to engage with others in a communal capacity to solve problems and gain insights that are beyond their own personal or organizational experiences. My guess is that they do so to protect egos, interests or lack of knowledge. However, the reality is that few people in the SharePoint community can profess to know everything about SharePoint. Instead, we pick our areas of expertise with an understanding that a base knowledge exists on most other areas. Post a comment on a SharePoint blog and see how quickly others are willing to help.

SharePoint has thrived because of a number of factors, and one of those factors is this communal influence. Join in with the pride of being a newbie or a SharePoint veteran who is always willing to learn something new.

Cheers,

RussECM

8/31/2009

Is "SharePoint Governance" A Dirty Word (Or yes…technically a “Phrase”)?

Good evening everyone,

For those of us who are living, breathing and eating SharePoint, the notion of Governance is not only attractive, it is a necessity. We've seen the complexities of trying to implement SharePoint without a balanced and coherent approach and so we argue for at least some level of governance.

However, the reality is that many more people have not been exposed to the need for governance. In fact, to these folks, governance can often be perceived as consultant or IT fodder which is in a large part, wholly unnecessary. And until they start to get exposed to the complexities of deploying a common SharePoint platform to the masses of an organization, their perspective is reasonably grounded.

So, to my fellow SharePoint and ECM peers, I’d like to offer up some advice. Or better yet, some shared experiences! Specifically, I’ve found that when dealing with people who are new to the SharePoint world, it is often best to introduce governance principles in a less formal context. Specifically, the notion of discussing standards from a business, delivery and technical perspective can be conveyed in ways that speak more generally to this audience.

For example, we can think of some common sense approaches to illustrate the point as follows:

§ Business: How to manage investments or time or money, which projects get selected, who needs to weigh in, how do we avoid duplication, etc.?

§ Delivery: Where does a business person turn to ask for a new site, understand what is possible with SharePoint, or get help in organizing and completing a project?

§ Technology: What standards are in place for WebParts, customizations, integrations, etc? How can we be sure that the right security is in place?

Rather than immediately introducing the language of governance for analyzing SharePoint requirements for each respective business function, it may be appropriate to discreetly prepare some analysis tools and suppress the formality of a standardized approach. Rather than referencing the importance of establishing a “governance steering committee”, it may be more appropriate to discuss the need to get people together on a regular basis to discuss what is and is not working with the SharePoint projects. And rather than discussing configuration management standards from deploying SharePoint features such as WSPs, it may be appropriate to discuss consistent practices for deploying customizations in SharePoint.

By taking this tact, you may be able to introduce important governance strategies without overwhelming those people new to SharePoint. It also allows for a less formal approach to be taken towards governance topics which can evolve into a formality level that fits your organization. As a general practice, we also find the notion of introducing a “governance light” strategy to be a positive one. In this capacity, governance principles are slowly introduced in an iterative fashion and all constituencies can ease into the process.

We think these are key issues because for many new to the complexities of managing SharePoint, governance “is for someone else”. All too often we hear that we are “too small”, “too big”, “too busy” or “just getting started” but before long there is a profusion of Sites, content, Meadata or approaches.

RussECM On Twitter - and here at SharePoint Governance.Org

8/11/2009

Readme... or Getting Started...

I couldn't think of a better title for my initial Guru blog post, so I thought I'd have a little fun with it and see how many people actually read this post... since none of us actually reads the "Readme.txt" or "GettingStarted.htm" file! :)

So all joking aside, My name is Russ Houberg. I'm a SharePoint MCM with KnowledgeLake, Inc. My goal with this blog is to occasionally bring you relevant information regarding SharePoint Scalability, Migration, and ECM related topics. So it's important to know that while I'll keep the KnowledgeLake "markitecture" to a minimum (this is a technical blog), there are times when the business case is the background for the technical content. So bear with me and I'll leave out the shameless plugs!

So over the weeks, months (and years?) ahead I hope that I can help a few folks to dial in the "right" way to architect for scale so that the SharePoint platform can provide for you what you ask of it. I hope to provide repeatable guidance based on Microsoft standards as far as they are available. I put the word "right" in quotes above because as most of you know, there are a lot of "right" (and wrong) ways out there and the "right" way for your solution will almost always involve the "it depends" component related to your situation.

I am actively working on Migration projects, massively high scale SharePoint farms (50K - 100K new documents per day), as well as SP2010 (don't ask...yet) and MSFAST search integration. So hopefully that will give you an idea of the types of topics I might post on.

So here's to "contributing to SharePoint searchipedia" in a structured and positive way!

Cheers,

Russ

7/21/2009

Governance leads to success

Establishing a governance team is a critcal step to the success of a SharePoint project, no matter how simple the project. I was working with a company that wanted to implement wikis and blogs on SharePoint to foster better internal collaboration. This organization understood the importance of establishing a governance team as an initial step to the project. The governance team was comprised of representatives of the various business groups that would be active in the use of the collaboration sites. This team validated the initial approach to using the wikis and blogs, helped establish the information architecture and developed the process in which a new wiki or blog would be created. We also presented to this team several use cases and had them validate that we had the right security and approval models.

Once we developed the information architecture,the use policies and access procedures, we were able to implement the system with a clear and approved direction. We then convenend the team to have them review the site and procedures before rolling them out to the general public. The governance team was also involved in the development of the training and communications plan. We were easily able to get buy in on both these plans as we had representatives from marketing and training on the team. We not only got buy in but the representatives offered to help in the execution in the plan (this fostered ownership in the process). This was key to the rollout process.

Using the governance team to not only help in the development of the policies and procedures but to help in the development and validation of the project was key to the successfull rollout of the system. The system was received well and the project viewed by management as a big success.

7/20/2009

Pick Your Poison - Governance or Chaos

Many people are intimidated by the idea of governance, whether it be for SharePoint or any other corporate initiative. The idea of getting people in a room to make enterprise wide decisions turns their stomach's and for good reason. It is a difficult thing to get people to agree on what is best and compromise must be king. There is no attainable Holy Grail in enterprise content management - we simply keep getting incrementally closer to our goal of seamless access to our data in a manner that benefits our business.

While stepping into the governance world might be daunting consider what happens when you don't. Chaos, lost information, angry users, discontinuity and ultimately, you'll have to deal with governance anyway! So, my advice is start small, but don't hesitate to step into getting the most out of your implementation.

A good governance committee can help technologists to identify enterprise wide issues before you deploy a product and help business people to communiate their most important data needs. Further, it can be a forum where people feel included in the process of architecting a system for which they will be partially responsible. Information architecture, records retention policy and the like are not owned by a SharePoint administrator or even a CIO. They are valuable assets of the business and must be shared by everyone. And you thought playing nice in the sandbox was only for kids!

I have found success by segmenting topics from broad to narrow in meetings such as this, but beware - someone needs to take ownership of the meetings themselves and have excellent leadership skills or you can go astray. Use a tool like MindMap or Visio and don't be afraid of a whiteboard to map out farm architecture or navigation. Make it as interactive as possible without getting out of control.

In the Peer Discussion area I posted a question for everyone on what you felt are the key goals of a Governance Committee. I'm looking forward to everyone weighing in on this list.

7/14/2009

Preventing SharePoint Sprawl And Mediocre SharePoint Deployments

Hello World,

As we contemplated the creation of www.sharepointgovernance.org, we recognized that there is an inherent need for end users to compare notes with end users. This basic premise served as the foundation for the site.

However, there is an underlying issue that also pushes us to take stock of our SharePoint initiatives. Specifically, many organizations look at SharePoint as not much more than an extension of Infrastructure (MS Exchange, Shared Drives, local drives, etc.). As a result, SharePoint then represents yet one more giant repository or as John Mancini (President of AIIM) likes to call it, a Digital Landfill (http://www.aiim.typepad.com/).

So, when taken in a half-cocked capacity, SharePoint has a propensity to achieve poor or mediocre results. Instead, it is incumbant upon business and IT leadership to look for introducing the ECM capabilities of SharePoint. In doing so, you set the stage for introducing real business value and this is where SharePoint goes from infrastructure to mission critical business problem solving technology that can make a difference (that's a whole lot of words).

So look at SharePoint from this context, develop an appreciation for defining a balance between the autonomy of business users and the importance of some centralized governance and then go forth with you SharePoint projects in a practical and managed capacity.

It is truly a tool that can make a difference for organizations when done the right way!