Six SharePoint Potholes

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) can help companies improve their organizational effectiveness and their bottom line. However, there are potholes in the road to implementing SharePoint that can cause an implementation to go in the wrong direction, slow down, or even come to a screeching stop. Here are six potholes I've encountered often in my efforts to help companies get their SharePoint implementations running smoothly and how to get around them.

Not Having a Governance Plan
SharePoint implementations can falter or fail because of poor governance. Setting policies, defining roles and responsibilities, and establishing processes to guide how your company is going to use SharePoint to accomplish its business goals is crucial. Without doing so, you're taking a huge risk. Without a governance plan, the people in your organization (e.g., end users, managers, developers, support staff, administration staff) likely won't have realistic expectations. Realistic expectations can only be set by defining the policies, people, and processes that will deliver SharePoint services.

So, if you don't have a governance plan in place, dedicate your time and resources into formulating one, even if you've already implemented some SharePoint projects. (Make formulating a governance plan your next SharePoint project.) If you already have a governance plan, don't be afraid to revisit it. A few years ago, many companies that had implemented Active Directory (AD) went through an "Oops, we didn't do it right the first time" phase. When these companies began reviewing their AD implementation, they realized that it wasn't meeting their business needs quite right or they weren't taking advantage of all the product had to offer.

A lot of companies that have implemented SharePoint are now beginning to enter the "Oops, we didn't do it right the first time" phase. (Interestingly, this phase is occurring much sooner in SharePoint's product cycle than it did in AD's product cycle.) Many companies are now looking at their SharePoint implementations and making such realizations as:

• SharePoint usage is greater or quite different than anticipated.
• Security and content management aren't quite aligned with the policies and realities of their organizations.
• They aren't taking advantage of certain SharePoint's features when they should be.
• There's some cleaning up to do, as SharePoint "in the wild" has become a bit, well, wild. Rogue, unmanaged installations need to be corralled and brought into line with standards, and data build-up has occurred because content lifecycle management wasn't in place.

If you aren't in this predicament, either your SharePoint implementation was very well planned and deployed or you're very lucky (or both). If you are in this predicament, don't feel bad. It's common for businesses to move forward differently than expected and have to adjust course later on.

Using MOSS When WSS Would Suffice
I've seen it over and over: Companies bite Microsoft's bait and commit to using MOSS too soon and too often. Many organizations are currently focusing their SharePoint implementations on collaboration to help information workers get their jobs done more effectively. In other words, they're focusing their efforts on streamlining file sharing, automating workflows, and implementing Web 2.0 (e.g., social networking) functionality. For many organizations, the additional value that MOSS brings to this particular scenario doesn't justify the cost differential between WSS (which is basically free) and MOSS.

Even in large enterprises and geographically distributed environments, WSS can serve the collaboration needs of branch and remote offices, with MOSS providing search, portal, and other enterprise-level services at headquarters. You're better off meeting as many business requirements as possible with WSS before committing to MOSS. I'm not saying that MOSS doesn't have a role to play—it most certainly does—but its roles are more likely to be in search, portal, and other services that complement collaboration.