(Note: The above presentation was from a year ago. Today’s session was an update on this)

In the first session after lunch (I need a black shirt for lunch at this conference, not a white shirt), Richard Harbridge from Allin Consulting is talking about SharePoint success.

Key points:
– In the 100 or so deployments Richard has been involved in, it’s always the non-technical stuff that de-railed the projects.
– What’s the biggest reason SharePoint fails? A technologists who thinks that SharePoint will solve the problem … just because.

– Success principle 1 – map the needs of the organization to the technology.
– With all of the technologies available from Microsoft, maybe SharePoint is not the right answer. You might need to buy Microsoft CRM, not create it in SharePoint.
– And even SharePoint has different options – cloud vs on-premises, 2007 vs 2010, foundation vs Standard vs Enterprise.

– Success principle 2 – need to develop shared language for what SharePoint is and can do.

– Success principle 3 – explain the benefits of the SharePoint platform
– There are inter-linkages between all of the things. Eg., if I change the permissions on a document, Search automatically works because results are security trimmed. This is a key benefit over and above buying a series of products.
– So … while SharePoint may be more expensive in the short term, it eventually offers the promise of lower overall cost.

– Success principle 4 – have a clear view on how SharePoint can add value to decision makers
– You need to move beyond platitudes, eg., “enhance collaboration.” What does that mean? What does that look like? Need to break it down to much more specific things.
– Take a current process, and look at how SharePoint can improve the way work gets done. Eg., from working on a document alone, to working on it with others, to using workflow for getting things routed around, to analytics on what’s happening.
– You need to manage expectations and maintain the momentum. You need to keep talking – because things take time.

– Success principle 5 – use ROI for two reasons – but measure the right things
– Calculate ROI as “estimated value divided by estimated difficulty.” It will give a quick way for prioritizing things. The more you do these estimates, the better you will get at estimating.
– The second reason for using ROI is to improve the return you get. Use usage reports to understand what’s happening … and use the high points to see what causes spikes. Eg., for blog posts.
– Richard’s example – the Spitfire in WW2, and how the engineers measured the wrong things by looking at the planes that landed safely instead of those that got shot down.

– Success principle 5 – you need governance
– see some of Richard’s content on CMSWire about the governance topic.
– want good people working together, as an active and ongoing process.

– Success principle 6 – take an iterative approach to SharePoint.
– Divide out the support burden for SharePoint. Don’t try to be SharePoint superman / superwoman.
– Avoid too much too fast.
– make sure you respond to user and business requests.

– Success principle 7 – work towards user adoption.
– use videos to show the cool things on the new intranet.
– high availability, mobility and external access improve user adoption. It makes it more easy to integrate the tools into day—to-day work.
– it’s good to have consistency across SharePoint.
– See Richard’s blog for 50 things you can do for adoption.