Stop Doing SharePoint Projects

Introduce me and 21apps – “helping our clients deliver SharePoint Business Value”

SharePoint Does Rock!

So whats the problem with SharePoint projects anyway?

Frame the problemIt doesn’t know your business, sector, organisation, business problem

There’s an on-going challenge (not too dissimilar to wife & husband):Business value versus requirements versus not relevant at all!

Combine a feature rich technology platform with requirements governance towards value and you get:Unhappy customerUnaware SharePoint guy

Huge dis-joint between what the business “think” they want and what you deliveredIt’s as though you weren’t listening or weren’t actually at the Requirements Session!But requirements don’t equal value and don’t equal what the client really wants!Give example

Celery contains 6 calories. But the mere act of digesting said stalk burns more like 10 calories, resulting in a negative caloric intake.QUESTION – How many of you are currently delivering projects with no/limited business value¾ of SharePoint projects I was aware of over the past 5 years DID NOT deliver true Business ValueRecession, Cuts, Pressure to deliver ROI, Business Cases/Justification… times are hard & SharePoint is expensive

f-Laws is defined as: “truths about organisations that we might wish to deny or ignore..[but is basically true and undeniable] ” (Ackoff & Addison, 2007)

f-Law1. IT project stakeholders, who don’t know how to measure what they want, settle for wanting what they can measure Social Media, can’t measure so I’ll have a MySite please…

f-Law2. The less important the requirement, the more time clients (and IT) spend discussing it.QUESTION – how much time have you spent arguing about minor config / positioning / branding things?

f-Law3. The more technical experience your supplier or IT department has, the less they understand your business needsNeeds a mindset shift to cope with both technical & business

f-Law4. The amount of business value a project can deliver is inversely proportional to the technical complexity that actually gets deliveredGoogle, Twitter, Basecamp, Wiki are all “simple” and all deliver substantial valueClear Vision, clear value, measurable & delivered succesfully

2 key realities for projects that are not based upon business value

Key issue is we don’t know we’ve delivered, because we don’t know what they want…Agile, waterfall, systems thinking etc doesn’t matter…

The final product doesn’t deliver what the business thought they were going to getStory - tell a story about business requirements equalling “sharepoint doesn’t do what we want”

QUESTION - Have you got an answer… what do you think should happen next?

SharePoint Does Rock!

The immediate prioritiesEncourage the audience to go do this tomorrow…

Stop the SharePoint project, don’t let it proceed any further..

Talk to the business stakeholders, a lot…

Rename your project – use business words

Have a focus outside of the IT organisation and into the business and their customersRe-prioritise your activities and your responsibilities (you’ll need 3 heads for this!)

Solution OverviewBusiness Value & the end users (throughout the process / interaction)

Solution OverviewBusiness Value & the end users (throughout the process / interaction)Information and Process Governance

Solution OverviewBusiness Value & the end users (throughout the process / interaction)Information and Process GovernanceOperational & Technical Governance

Now we have a Business Project rather than a SharePoint one what are the new challenges?

Changing business mindsetsTrust in ITHow many business actually know what business value they’re trying to deliver!?

Business stakeholders “time”Getting the business articulating “business value”They are tainted with past history… they have heard of the mythical SharePoint and its functionality

We look at the SharePoint Project world differently…Business Stories…Vision, Business Value, Business outcomes…etc

We look at the SharePoint Project world differently…View the world in terms of Organisational EvolutionRightshifting, Hybrid Organisations, Systems ThinkingTechnology platforms are enablers, but are only a small part of the whole thinking

What do you do if you in the midst of a “celery SharePoint project”

But what happens when your project is already “poisoned”??

In the Strategy, Value, benefits and requirements phases: Ban the word SharePoint and any reference to SharePoint functionality

Focus on business value not the technology solutionAsk why, why do you want this? What value will it deliver [being pink and on the left with this meta data]?

Get coffee, go to the pub and get a Shared Understanding about what the business is trying to achieve!SharePoint guys should Eat, think, work, play, Sleep with the business… in the first half of the projectThe business should Eat, think, work, play, Sleep with the business… in the second half of the project

Drop the IT Ego’sIt’s not about you & the IT department - Get over it!Don’t start by thinking of innovative solution the users may want….Deliver innovative solutions that’s deliver the business value they really need

Find those gold nuggets of value in the requirements Go back to the business Get to the value statement and measures

Moving from a SharePoint Project to a Business Value Project should be viewed like going to WeightWatchers!It needs a Shift in mindset (business & IT)Will powerNot about the food (SharePoint) its about the calories (Value)

Reality has to be that we are employed/contracted to help facilitate the business to achieve its strategy & goalsAdhoc– Do SharePoint, just because… zero or accidental business valueAnalytic - SharePoint deployed by the rules, local business value, not org wise and not aligned to organisational strategySynergistic – Looking at the whole organisation, experience driven & value based