Sharepoint Deployment Calls For Meticulous Planning

Sharepoint deployment is all about how carefully you plan things out otherwise it can a be bumpy road ahead, say experts. They advice not to overlook the planning part. Users experience frustrations when they fail to devote time on planning. It is often seen that companies lured by the rich functionality that this platform offers are in a hurry to implement it; as a result are unable to use its functions fully. When things don’t work out as expected dissatisfaction begins to creep in, which can be disastrous for the business.

In a recent study conducted by experts it was found that a mere 50 percent of organisations participating in the project gave thumbs up to SharePoint adoption. While 1/4th of the organisations surveyed couldn’t go past the basic deployment stage – around 10 percent of the firms thought they made the wrong choice. Experts however opined that SharePoint cannot be blamed for the user frustration because those who carried it out did not do it properly. In order to fully use the capabilities of SharePoint you need to pay attention to how to tap this resource. Furthermore, attention has to be paid to the governance side of it.

Planning Is The Key In SharePoint Deployment

The vital element you need to focus on while doing the planning is the governance strategy. First of all work out the content which will be available; be clear about how you’ll be managing the records and policies related to the content. At the initial stage begin adding metadata to facilitate easy access and retrieval of the content.

If the governance strategy is not considered the entire plan can go haywire. A few years back a clinical research provider deployed SharePoint to set up a clinical trial management system. They used the system to track projects which were at various stages of completion. They kept on adding new functionality to the system in order to make more use of SharePoint. However, they forgot to take into account how the functionality will fit in with the overall management picture! A couple of years down the line the company were forced to start from square one. They redeployed SharePoint but not before sorting out the governance issues.

The biggest issue in these kinds of deployments is that users in the early stages bypass the info & policy management side. People create websites in the belief that they’ll make business operations smooth and hassle free. But no steps are taken to organize the information. They have no strategy on how customers will use that information. Frequent launches and abandonment of the websites results in buildup of junk content. That messes up the whole operation. This mess up can be avoided by making policies that speed up the website setting up process and at the same time provide a way to get rid of unused websites. Through proper planning and implementation SharePoint deployment can bring about gains instead of causing troubles. So place your focus on planning while carrying out the deployment.