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Gremlins, Transformers, Coins & Why Your SharePoint Is Failing

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SharePoint has the ability to meet many business requirements but quite often it falls short. I see nearly every issue arising from SharePoint arising from two problems; they’re both different sides of the same coin.

SharePoint and Parenting.

I have a son who is almost two years old and like many parents, I know that there has to be a balance between allowing my son to explore his world and ensuring he doesn’t accidentally kill himself (“Conor, don’t jump off the end tables! Why are you on the end tables?”). These same parental principals apply in SharePoint. If I limit my son in ways that stifle his creativity, he won’t be able to develop key areas of his brain function that will be useful later in life. On the other hand, if I allow my son to do anything he wanted at any time, he probably wouldn’t be alive (my son has a lot of energy and little decision making capability; they say that will come with time).Likewise, your knowledge workers need to be able to collaborate usefully within SharePoint without creating a mess that you’re going to have to clean up later… “Are we out of paper towels?”

Let’s explore both sides of the issue.

Heads: Sprawl

SharePoint can magically transform. I bet you didn't know this and Microsoft doesn't tell you this, but like a little Mogwai becoming a Gremlin, your SharePoint can morph. Your useful business tool starts growing and like a cancer it hits the lymphatic system. Welcome to the world of sprawl.

Solution: Stewardship & Training

Ensuring that you limit files, file lists and sites is your first step to stop Megatron (Transformers) or rather, sprawl. Remember when you first rolled out SharePoint, when you had such high hopes and wide eyes? That was when you should have put together your Governance Strategy. Since you didn’t, we’ll have to go back in time to understand why you initially launched SharePoint for your organization.

What were your business requirements for SharePoint at its’ launch? Was SharePoint rolled out as an ECRM (Enterprise Content & Records Management) solution? Was it primarily a collaboration tool? Whatever your initial aim, does it still match your current business requirements? Since your launch have other tools taken the place of SharePoint for a particular role? Which tool should be utilized going forward?

Once you’ve determined what you did and do want to use SharePoint for. You can now start to restore SharePoint to its glory (think of a Gremlin turning back into a Mogwai). It’s time to determine what needs to go.

With your business requirements in hand, you can now start hacking away and pruning your SharePoint (there are a number of great 3^rd party tools available to assist you). The other piece is establishing new rules and permissions to limit future sprawl.

The other piece is the reeducation of staff. With most sprawl issues in SharePoint there are two issues underlying, one has to do with your permissions, the other are your users. If your users don’t understand why SharePoint exists in your organization you could end up with users who are using site pages to list their favorite Led Zeppelin songs (1. Black Dog 2. When The Levee Breaks 3. How Many More Times).

It’s time to reeducate your users. When they understand the business uses of SharePoint, combined with your changes to permissions, you’ve got a perfect storm to start making things right. Not only can you prune back your SharePoint, but your users, when they understand the business needs, will start doing the same. Magically, your SharePoint sprawl will end. Just don’t let the Mogwai get wet again.

Tails: Over Control, Under Innovate

When you put too much control over your SharePoint users, they don’t utilize SharePoint (either properly or at all). Worse yet, some savvy users will go rogue and start utilizing freemium web products for tasks that SharePoint should be fulfilling increasing your corporate risk and information silos.

Solution: Focus on Business Requirements

This is probably going to sound familiar, but remember those high hopes and wide eyes? Let’s go back to your business requirements again. What were they when you launched SharePoint and what are they now. What are your industry’s legal requirements?

If you can loosen the reigns a bit (I know this isn’t always possible) and allow more collaboration you can get better results from your SharePoint, but don’t go so far as to create a new problem of sprawl. A best practice is to increase functionality incrementally while informing your user base of changes.

The Edge Of The Coin: The Goldilocks SharePoint

This is your target, finding the perfect balance in SharePoint or most any ECM system for that matter is a delicate process which requires your care and attention. When done correctly the difference will be noticable.

Comments

Start with Your Purpose

Submitted by Billy Cripe August 02, 2011 - 4:07 PM

You're dancing around it but I think you're really driving at with Simon Sinek calls the golden circle in "starting with why". The idea is put a stake in the ground with your purpose. Then drive, create and manage expectations to that goal. I talk about that in my 'A Maven's Guide to ECM" on slide share here: http://www.slideshare.net/billycripe/a-mavens-guide-to-ecm-best-practices


I have a hard time with the concept of dealing with successful adoption of SharePoint by taking away features that users are using. That is a sure way to create anger and hostility.

But just saying "focus on business requirements" is way too vague to be helpful. If the requirements are for file sharing between peers, you still get undirected and unrestrained growth as shares are set up and orphaned each time a doc needs to be shared. Biz Req met. Problems still happen.

The need is for a content strategy that takes into account the enterprise context (e.g. what's the primary need: file sharing or activity streaming or expertise location?) Then create the system using the tools (e.g. SharePoint) that are oriented to that purpose.

This is not a trivial activity and the trade offs are substantial so a deliberate strategy is required. Anyone who tells you it is easy hasn't seen the other end.

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