Lynn Warneke shares her reaction to my book, SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration:

“Those of us working in the change management slipstream behind large scale technology implementations understand that ‘doing SharePoint’ is not, in itself, all that likely to result in successful outcomes. As compared with setting out to ‘improve collaboration’ or ‘enable better information management’ across the organisation; and then identifying SharePoint as the platform to help achieve these business objectives. If the Field of Dreams model has ever worked in the enterprise, it must surely have been such a rare occurrence that no credible IT department or project management office would predicate a SharePoint deployment on the premise of “build it and they’ll come.” Would they?

Unfortunately, there are still too many reports of organisations that have ‘done SharePoint’ in just this fashion and presided over a qualified success at best, or a huge failure at worst. The shiny new portal is pretty much ignored (or loathed). Or the plethora of issues with the file server, local hard disks and email, which SharePoint was expected to remedy, inexorably start to replicate themselves inside the new technology platform. The much anticipated improvements in team collaboration don’t materialise. New problems start to arise, such as ungoverned Team Site chaos, that over time erode rather than enhance the ‘knowledge sharing’ the business wants so badly to leverage.

SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration, Michael Sampson’s latest publication, offers clear and succinct advice to ensure you avoid these all-too-common pitfalls and deliver a SharePoint implementation that is a real success, in real business terms. As Michael himself asserts, “The point isn’t to have a nice shiny SharePoint implementation; the point is doing business better.”

Michael’s previous hands-on volume, Seamless Teamwork: Using Microsoft SharePoint Technologies to Collaborate, Innovate and Drive Business in New Ways, described how to leverage the technology by exploring the ‘real world’ scenario of a new cross-company strategy initiative, ‘Project Delta.’ While SharePoint implementers certainly stood to benefit tangentially, that work was explicitly intended for the users – information workers and project team members needing to get the most out of this new technology for their own and their team’s benefit. This new book, as indicated by its title, continues the collaboration focus, but presents a broader business roadmap for effective planning, evaluation, governance, engagement and user adoption to ensure the organisation’s SharePoint investment results in tangible business benefits. While intended for IT professionals, it has wide relevance on both sides of the technology/business fence – the product selection group, steering committee, trainers, stakeholder and change managers, and the technology implementers. I agree with Paul Culmsee – Michael’s second book is even better than his first.

It’s a great (and an easy) read – concise and incisive, only as technical as necessary, informed and authoritative, and above all practical, so you too can “make SharePoint take off and work for your firm.”“

Thanks Lynn!