SharePoint Saturday Johannesburg 2012
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Presentation and speech used during my session at SharePoint Saturday Johannesburg 2012
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SharePoint Saturday Johannesburg 2012
- 1. 19 May 2012 The first ever all green SharePoint event on earth SharePoint in mining and engineering Pieter van der Dussen saamwerk - CEO @pvddussen #SPSJHB
- 2. privileged independent CSIR MWeb academic socially incubator first aware 10 000 #SPSJHB2012 websites big bank web services 19 May 2012 support industry 3 barriers impede agility progress: legacy systems, bulletproof solutions, culture clash. #CIOF12 #FEAF12 - @forrester
- 3. engineers old profession lifestyle development personal process accountability #SPSJHB2012 no consolidation poor IT sharing 19 May 2012 investment knowledge 79% of biz decision makers say they rely on tech to innovate in the business. 42% say IT is too bureaucratic. #CIOF12, #FEAF12 - @forrester
- 4. support any don‘t be the problem company boundaries adapt to #SPSJHB2012 be specific client detail 19 May 2012 Personal vagueness It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling. - @TheMarkTwain
- 5. • 3 or 4 countries, • 8 to 10 corporate entities • 10 000 files • Several contracts, #SPSJHB2012 thousands of pages each, • Huge project plans, • Hundreds of millions of 19 May 2012 dollars! A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. - John Lennon via @googlebooks
- 10. Minutes are typed during meeting and available immediately after the meeting.
- 14. SharePoint not enough horizontal portal vertical silos beyond the business firewall intelligence #SPSJHB2012 19 May 2012 templates Social learning is not about "plan and organise " or "command and control" but "encourage and support" to "connect and collaborate" #lscon - @C4LPT
- 15. #SPSJHB2012 Questions? www.saamwerk.co.za 19 May 2012 pvddussen@saamwerk.net @pvddussen (012) 664 2300
Editor's Notes
- I come from a very privileged background. Not because I grew up rich – my father definitely did not tick that box on his bucket list! – but because I grew up in my family during the 80s and 90s. Being an academic and socially extremely aware, my farther instilled in us a sense of independent opinion. Part of his mentoring building the ability to view the world from different vantage points.During my post-graduate studies my sister organised a job for me at the CSIR to assist in building a website – remember, this was 1995! This was one of the first 10 000 websites ever to exist! When The Internet started to become a meme in South Africa, we were purchased with the co-existing ISP business, and turned into the first version of MWeb.After a few years with MWeb, and even returning to them after a detour, I landed at one of the big banks in South Africa and then in their incubator. Remember, this was the early part of the 21st century and having an incubator as part of the enterprise was quite fashionable back then, even though I did not understood what it means back then! Here we developed and implemented web based business systems which were transferred into the rest of the bank after some serious restructuring. Although we utilised client-server software to support some of the processes, the bulk of the business processes developed and implemented by our team, was web based.One of my fond memories of this time is a long conversation our team had during one lunch hour on how this new architectural model called web services will forever change the world and how we apply http/s.What binds everything together is the fact that during my career, except for the time we produced consumer websites, I produced nothing. I was merely supporting those who had to produce the goods.In short: My whole professional life has been emerged in the web as a meme, technology and way of life!But how does this relate to the subject of my talk?
- What you have to understand about engineersEngineers as a fraternity are one of the oldest professions – if not the oldest – in the world. They literally developed every single aspect of our modern day lifestyle. We could not even have this conference were it not for them!Also, engineers are one of the few professions that still maintain personal accountability. Whereas a CA, by way of example, does not stand liable for the financial statements he produces, an engineer does! Should anything go wrong with the bridge he designed, he stands personally liable for his mistakes and omissions. One of few where white collar and blue collar workers are working next to each other.Would any of us like to carry this responsibility?To accommodate this responsibility, the fraternity developed very different from any other industry:While some attempts were made over the years, the industry never consolidated. Why would it consolidate when personal accountability is underpinning the industry?Very specific processes to share and store knowledge. The discipline surrounding drawings, for instance, has been developed over centuries and the cultural aspects driving the knowledge sharing process between the different parties.These two aspects, driven by a sense of self-preservation, make it extremely difficult to implement new technologies:Very few companies actually have the means to invest the kind of money required to build and implement the systems and processes required to completely adapt to the digital world. The other aspect of this fragmentation is that there are no clear industry leaders. In the case of the financial industry, there are sufficient leadership from the large banks and insurance companies to allow IT innovation to filter through the whole industry. This is not so easy within engineering.Even when a company develops to a size sufficient to support the investment required to implement new technology in this process, they are still bound by the rest of the fraternity and thus cannot push the boundary too far. No entity can afford to lose sight of the lowest common denominator. IT innovation is not a key differentiator!Since self-preservation is the key driver in knowledge sharing, changing any process is not that easy! The current process is working and serves its purpose. It is also not the key element: While drawings and other knowledge sharing artefacts are important in the engineering process, they only embody the end result of the design process and are not representing the design process in its entirety. Thus, while the design process can be inferred, a lot of knowledge stays with the engineer and his draughtsmen and is not communicated.The other side of this coin is that the drawing is not the end result: The structure to be manufactured or constructed from this drawing is. It is merely an interstitial step to allow the downstream parties to do their job: Costing, scheduling and eventual manufacturing or construction. There is a history of failed attempts to bring IT to the core of the engineering process. Much of this has to do with the stubbornness of the engineers, but actually it has more to do with the IT guys not paying sufficient respect to the process and the reasons for its existence. [Tell story about Bateman and Microsoft/Oracle decision]Their reality: Paper, manual work, email collaboration
- But where does SharePoint fit in?We all know that SharePoint can support every company in the world even though it may be fairly impractical for some. The same goes for engineers. SharePoint just have to adapt to their world. Once this has been achieved, they are quite willing to take the journey and discover more. There are a few ground rules though:Set the boundaries early: Engineers like to test the boundaries of any system, including IT. Someone will find the odd scenario that exists outside of SharePoint’s capabilities and turn this into an excuse why it needs to be ignored. Thus, make sure Exco understands the boundaries of the offering very early.You adapt to them, not the other way round: Engineers are very smart people and mostly wants to adapt. However, since their everyday life is governed by the need to solve problems, they resist IT systems that require them to solve another problem, however small this challenge may be. SharePoint thus has to adapt to their way of working. This is quite a challenge since SharePoint is such a departure from anything that existed before. No file sharing application, network file share, document management system or anything else they had previous exposure to, can prepare them for SharePoint.Be specific, but keep it generic: This is one of the biggest challenges targeting this industry. Engineers are very specific and detail driven but not when it gets personal – they are very vague about personal issues, especially those that can be perceived as inadequacy. Unfortunately, implementing SharePoint is personal since it requires behavioural change. Remember, change management is different from most other industries since the bulk of your users are not clerical, but professional. Issuing a directive that behaviour has to change is not sufficient. Thus, be specific about the new process but don’t get personal!
- So, what did we do?Very simple: We made their documents accessible! This seems simple but one has to remember that a mining project can easily comprise of the following:3 or 4 different countries,8 to 10 different corporate entities, even more,10 000 different files of which the bulk is drawings,Several contracts spanning literally thousands of pages each,Project plans with 10 000 tasks or more – and this is only the central project plan,Hundreds of millions of dollars!Within this framework, top down governance is almost impossible and has to be democratised. Still ruled by a constitution but interpreted differently by each entity. Once again, the process is governed by the lowest common denominator.Finding the information pertinent to your current process can thus be a very difficult task! By forcing a few simple metadata fields onto the users, finding the correct information is much easier.[Explain content types, metadata, managed metadata and key filters using Ghaghoo Diamond Mine and Letšeng Kholo as examples. This will make up the bulk of the presentation.][Use the example of meeting sites with tasks and minutes on Ghaghoo Diamond Mine as an example of what can be done once focus is placed on delivering value and not delivering a professional service]
- Meetings are most important part of knowledge sharing. Fragmentation and different locations necessitates regular and detailed meetings. Water cooler conversations not possible.
- Minutes are a huge issue in this environmentSeveral entitiesCreates safety
- While not perfect, some users actually get their Excel graphs on the site!
- Using Discussion boards as a central record of email conversations.
- We even got them to blog!
- What is in the future?Simple: SharePoint is not enough. While SharePoint provides a lot of functionality, it is not sufficient to complete support an engineering project. It should be utilised as horizontal portal that in itself has a lot of functionality, but, integrating SharePoint with the underlying vertical silos are even more important than implementing SharePoint itself.One of the key elements in this venture is to ensure that users, especially key users, understand that the next step does not represent to full SharePoint functionality. They have to grow with the product and explore the use of other functions in SharePoint. Key issues currently include:Utilising the BI-functions built into SharePoint: Data and data analysis is really poorly developed in the engineering process. Most data objects are very dirty Excel sheets or represents data models from the 80s or 90s. To this day, most operational data is captured on paper and is very difficult to convert in a digital format. This lack of development is severely hampering the ability of different Excos to effectively manage their projects and even enterprises. The perception that computers exist in order to create paper artefacts faster, prettier and more efficient than before is still dominating the business process.Breaking down the corporate firewall: Even though engineering is fragmented, each fragment is quite closed and information cannot be shared across the firewall in any easy manner. The utilisation of MySites is the key in bringing some social collaboration into the process.The efficient use of templates: Documentation is a key process yet, the use of templates is very poor. The use of samples is confused with templates and the implementation of templates in conjunction with content types is a key building block for the future.ClosingFor most of us 1 + 1 = 2 but for engineers 1 + 1 is an indication of 2. The curious mixture of attention to detail and specifics mixed with assumptions and interpretations makes for a difficult environment to work as an outsider. Couple this with the fact that behavioural scenarios makes for interesting scenes where users wrongly interpret 1 + 1 to be 3 (users are by nature irrational and interprets the world from his vantage point and not any factual scenario) or even where 1 + 1 = 10 (factual, binary) then the implementer has a great challenge.The implementer may not assume anything, even factual assumptions. Somewhere someone will be out to prove him wrong! As with all other industries, finding and presenting real value is what will make the project successful.