SharePoint Saturday - SharePoint Success

SharePoint Success
How To: Manage and Implement SharePoint Projects Presented By: Richard Harbridge
This Session Is Being Recorded
Richard Harbridge
SharePoint Saturday 2009

Who Am I?

Richard Harbridge
Is a Business Analyst
Is a Blogger/Tweeter
Loves SharePoint
Loves Communities
Loves Technology
Blah BlahBlah
Loves Project Management
Loves Psychology
Loves Talking

Richard Harbridge

More Important: Who Are You?

The Single Most Valuable Takeaway From Today Is…

Each Other

Share the Point Exercise:
Fill Out Your Full Name
Fill Out Your Title or “Camp” (IT Admin, Dev, Manager etc…)
List at least 3 Things You Love (SharePoint, Gadgets, Math etc…)
Add Preferred Contact Method(s)
Give that to someone you DON’T know and try and get theirs.

Richard Harbridge

Agenda
What we are going to talk about today…

All About Buy In
Governance
Implementation

From Here To Here
Richard Harbridge

Buy In/Motivation/Drivers
Why is SharePoint being looked at?

Someone is Interested
Gather Around Ideas (Like Minds)
Abundance Thinking
Collaboration/Working Together
Communication/Sharing
Define Vision, Objectives and Priority
Achieve Momentum
Maintain Momentum (Keep People Involved)

Richard Harbridge

Cost Of Ownership (IT)
The Biggest Point to Share is:

SharePoint eventually allows Business Users to develop and implement business solutions that use technology without IT’s involvement.

The Reality:

IT doesn’t want to learn/support a new technology.
SharePoint’s integration is invaluable to IT.
A unified application delivery platform like SharePoint can greatly reduce costs, time and effort for new work.

Richard Harbridge

Lets Talk Numbers (CFO/Finance)

SharePoint is worth the initial investment and ongoing costs.

The Reality:

It is a costly investment and costly on going expense.
Money can be invested to always generate a return.
You need to have measurement, account for risk, and have some expectation of return (quantifiable) that makes it worth the initial investment/on going costs.

Richard Harbridge

Add Value/Increase Profit (Executive)

SharePoint improves productivity, reduces waste, and improves visibility to help drive better decision making.

The Reality:

It takes time and investment to reach the point all managers and executives want.
Productivity gain can be difficult to measure, as can reduction in waste.

Richard Harbridge

Evaluating Return on Investment
Money Matters:

Always show expected cost and return over multiple years.
Use discount rate to help account for risk and competitive investment rate.
Internal Rate of Return will help find the ‘break even point’.

Richard Harbridge

The Simplest ROI Formula Ever
Estimated Value / Estimated Difficulty * 100 = ROI
Examples:

I have a difficult requirement. It’s an 8 in difficulty (out of 10).
I have an easy requirement. It’s a 2 in difficulty (out of 10).
The expected value of the difficult requirement is 4 (out of 10).
The expected value of the easy requirement is 6 (out of 10).

Richard Harbridge

Mapping Solutions to Objectives
 Direct Relationship Indirect Relationship
Richard Harbridge

Information
Information
Information
Information
Information Overload
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Scalable Architecture
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SharePoint Solutions (Evolution)
*Super Simplified
Richard Harbridge

Governance
Governance is… Required
It requires a fair amount of effort but is worth it.
Managing, supporting and implementing SharePoint is a teameffort. Without effective governanceorganization, performance, andcapability are significantly reduced.
Richard Harbridge

Governance Teams
There are typically 5 teams for SharePoint Governance:

Business Strategy Team
Technical Strategy Team
Tactical Teams:
Tactical Operations Team
Tactical Development Team
Tactical Support Team

Richard Harbridge

Executing Governance
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The Results
Shared understanding of SharePoint related processes.
Governance Documentation:

Aggregate/Reference Document (Contains all SharePoint Info)
Objectives/Priorities (Tech/Business)
Operations Documentation
Development Documentation
Support Documentation

Richard Harbridge

My “Recommended” Approach
When implementing any solution in SharePoint I would highly recommend an iterative approach.
Reasons why Iterative ‘works’ for SharePoint projects:

Understanding SharePoint is key for Developers, Testers, Analysts, and Managers. It takes time, so iterative allows you to learn, correct, and improve more easily.
SharePoint is great for rapid prototyping, and for proof of concept work. Since so much is ‘built in’ you can leverage tons without writing much code which also means you only test your code.
It ensures there is time to review, adjust, and communicate.

Richard Harbridge

Implementation/Support
Implementation/Support planning is critical to SharePoint success.
What’s important?

Communication Planning
Support Planning
End User Adoption
Training
Plan for New Work(In this case Enhancements, New Features, etc)

Richard Harbridge

A Communication Plan will:

Will act as a binding agreement (forces you to carry through).
Helps keep communication focused.
Helps prevent unwanted surprises.

Communication Tips:

Use pictures and more pictures.
Explain as much as you can (Pros/Cons).
Solidifies decisions and allows them to explain to anyone who asks.
Ask every question three times in three different ways.

Communication
Richard Harbridge

Support
Plan how you are going to support SharePoint.

Have multiple tiers for escalation.(You can’t know everything).
Ensure site admins can/do provide support.
Diversify support resources/mediums: Online, books, manuals, cheat sheets, one on one, etc.
Measure support! Learn and use data to be proactive.

Support Tip:

Respond!You never want to give the IT busy signal, or support busy signal.

Richard Harbridge

User Adoption
User Adoption can fail because users don’t understand the value.
Successful User Adoption Requires:

Useful, digestible training sessions (less than an hour).
Avoid too much too fast/Keep it simple. (Like learning to drive.)
Cultivate and promote the right culture.
Focus on those on board/ready and reward lavishly/provide incentive.
Make sure they understand why they are using SharePoint.

Richard Harbridge

User Adoption Tricks

Pick something they love. If they like working in outlook then focus on that as your starting point.
Reward super users with achievements. Then promote the desire to get rewards.
Create a SharePoint Showcase where users submit and show off their solutions.
Do a video that is both informative and interesting when releasing SharePoint. Like this one!
Walk the talk/Eat your own dog food/Live by example.

Richard Harbridge

Handling New Work/Growth
Greater User Knowledge > Greater Requirements/Needs

Prepare a good system (in SharePoint?) for managing change requests, enhancement requests, new features, and new work.
Spend time in advance building a channel for new work.
Cultivate new work! It’s a good thing. This boosts user adoption! (More functionality and dependency over time)

Richard Harbridge

Thank You!
Let’s talk, and/or tweet!