My blog post on evaluating SharePoint consultants was only meant to draw attention to the fact that there is far more to the story than development and administration expertise. So how do you proceed using SharePoint if you don't have an unlimited budget?
1. It is always a good idea to get some help kicking off your project, especially where new technologies are concerned. That is the idea behind my Governance and Taxonomy workshop. It is best when it is completed before you have rolled out SharePoint, but can be used to put SharePoint "back on track." It covers Governance, Taxonomy and a Project Charter. And it is not, by any means, the whole story. That is why I hold it down to two days, to limit your cost. This may seem like a luxury, but it is hard to have a project end well if it doesn't begin well.
2. Next it is a really good idea to get a SharePoint MVP to come in for A DAY OR TWO to help develop and validate your deployment plan, infrastructure,and capacity plan.
3.Invest in SharePoint Administrator Training. Rather than invest in more consulting, at this point it is important to develop your own staff. This is true whether you have a staff of two or two hundred supporting SharePoint. You need to make sure you have the internal expertise to keep SharePoint alive and cared for. This takes about four to five days of training with a live instructor. There is a definite mentoring process that is needed to gel the administrator's thinking and behavior patterns organized, so a live trainer is essential IMHO.
4. Invest in Site Administrator Training. This end user training goes by many different names, but you are going to need to have intelligent and motivated business folk do the majority of the heavy lifting when it comes to creating and maintaining sites.
5. Invest in Developer Training. Although I hammer away at the economics of custom development, it is an excellent tool for your organization, when it is properly used and implemented. Again this is, in my opinion, best done with a live trainer.
5. Do invest in a few books.
6. Go as far as you can with the out-of-the-box toolset, templates and webparts.
7. Join a good User Group. I can't emphasize the importance of this enough!
8. Buy your custom BDC tools, web parts, and master pages off the shelf. Use Bamboo Solutions, Lightening Tools, and other reputable tool manufacturers. Their stuff is usually pretty cheap.
9. Establish a good relationship with a consultant or consulting organization that has strong developer and administrator skills. This is, at the end of the day, where you will need the most help.
10. LOB integration is probably not something to do right away, so don't worry about this one just yet. this is definitely not a Mercury Capsule project. It is more like a Space Shuttle project.
11. Make sure your other technology partners and vendors are bonafide Microsoft SharePoint partners. When it comes to storage planning, you are going to have to rely upon your NAS or SAN vendor and they are going to have to understand SharePoint.
12. Do go to conferences where you can rub elbows with vendors and peers alike.
13. DO NOT fall for every snake oil salesperson you meet in the SharePoint Space. If somebody has a whiz bang tool or application that magically solves all your problems for you, then you are going to want to validate that it actually works. Rule of thumb--if an application or tool takes away the pressure to think through your organizations' management and technology issues, then it is most likely bogus. You are still going to have to do the heavy lifting when it comes to thought and preparation. Again, that is why I created the workshop.
14. MOST IMPORTANTLY - Start small! Remember to build your Mercury Capsule first (a site or site collection), then your Gemini Capsule (a larger site collection or two) and then your Apollo Capsule (your first enterprise deployment).
15. Wait a while before you start building externally-facing solutions with SharePoint. It is much less embarrassing to mess up internally than it is to do so in front of the whole world.
16. Find a graphics, marketing and advertising agency capable of creating and modifying Master Pages.
17. Treat your internal SharePoint people very well indeed. They are part of the most employable technology profession on the planet. If they are any good at all, someone else is going to hire them if they can. So don't overwork them, undertrain them, and under support them. If you ignore them they will go away.
©Copyright Mark Ragar Schneider, 2009 All Rights Reserved
