Sharepoint is only 10% of the real challenge
Maybe it is because I am really interested in the topic, but it looks as thought there is an increasing amount of activity around the Microsoft Sharepoint product in relation to Enterprise 2.0.
Euan Semple already seems to have made up his mind. Others that I read, like Simon and Sid are still very much in the process of making up their mind.
I am in the same boat (as you may know), working for a big company and currently also in a “mode” to learn about the value of Sharepoint, as it is inevitably coming towards us all.
Issues with Sharepoint
One of the common “issues” mentioned in relation to Sharepoint, is that it is so easy to partially close the site to groups of fellow employees. This is obviously not what you want (unless regulation demands it!), so the best way now is to learn to get the most out of it in terms of emulating a real “open” environment. This is where corporate policy kicks in, I think. Corporate policy should understand/explain the value of open connections and stimulate it, to a point where the policy is “open unless….”(a very, very exceptional case; e.g. Chinese walls regulation).
Other comments, like that of Euan Semple (as I understand it), deal more with the look and feel offered by Sharepoint (“Microsoft seems too good at creating sterile environments run by control freaks who hate messiness, consider conversations unprofessional and rarely understand the true pulse of their organisations”). Simon mentions Sharepoint sites being difficult to navigate for non-frequent visitors, in the out-of-the-box version, requiring some serious re-skinning overhead.
Is it not about the tool!
While I still, personally, have to really get some hands-on experience with Sharepoint, I get the feeling that, instead of focussing on “the tool”, we should worry far more about the mindset of people requiring to work with it. Who is actually going to blog on the new blogging templates Sharepoint offers? And who will provide the open, fully transparent, feedback via commenting while everybody is watching (including your boss!). Who dares to ask questions openly and show he does not know all? And so on. The same for wiki’s (also included in Sharepoint!), which seem to have even a slower adoption process. It appears to me that there are some real educational and cultural challenges ahead. Nonetheless, these are interesting times…
What do you think?
Related: my other Sharepoint articles
Technorati tags: Sharepoint, SharePoint 2007, Microsoft, Enterpriseweb2.0, Enterprise2.0, Web 2.0, Office 2007, Wiki, Blog
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posted Oct 15, 11:02 pm on Oct 15, 2007 |
category: Sharepoint
/ Enterprise 2.0
You can play a lot with the look and feel of Sharepoint. It was more the mindsets of those running Sharepoint and the underlying philosophy of it I was concerned about.
And just to clarify my blog posts rarely reflect a closed mind on any subject!
— Euan Semple Oct 16, 03:40 am #
Hi Euan,
Thanks for your clarification!
Marcel
— Marcel Oct 16, 11:05 am #
Hey Marcel,
Thought I’d pop over and say hi.
It looks like SharePoint is going to be playing a much bigger part of my working life in the near future so I’m in for some interesting times. I’ve been asked to “lead/provide guidance” to the group when it comes to the implementation of SharePoint. So that’s going to be around 500 people looking to me for answers on where we draw the lines between intranets, blogs, content management systems and SharePoint. Should be fun!
I was chatting to another group about it today and again the same thing came up…who gets access to the site! I suppose all I can do is encourage some openness and hope for the best.
I think you’re right though when you say we should think about the people more. But then the tools and the people are so intertwined. It’s difficult to alter the people without the tools and the tools are useless without the people. I don’t think it’s a case of one without the other and that’s kind of why I’m uneasy with SharePoint. It gives people a way to hide in their old ways. Talk to people about open collaboration and then give them MediaWiki and they have to live in the open world. Give them SharePoint and they can still section off areas and let those bad habits creep in.
In the case of SharePoint it’s difficult to use the functionality to drag them into the social world.
As you say, interesting times ahead!
— Sid Oct 17, 04:30 pm #
Depending on how you roll out SharePoint Users can indeed hide content from parts of the organization. This is something you don’t want to be removed from SharePoint due to Compliancy.
SharePoint can be used in both structured collaboration (business processes with workflow and Rights Management) and unstructured collaboration (teamsites, Wiki, Blogging).
Depending the kind of information that is stored you can decide if it’s available publicly or not as the owner of the content.
For groups that do not collaborate today it will indeed not be easy to start using blogs and wiki’s, but when your company makes money using professionals instead of only taskworkers it will probably be easier.
But giving tools to employees alone is not what makes an enterprise an Enterprise 2.0. How do you rate employees? Based on hours or based on results? Can you get credit if you’re a real added value for the company or get’s your manager afraid that you want his/her job?
In my opinion (being paid by Microsoft ) SharePoint, combined with tools like OCS can help a company in getting ready for Enterprise 2.0, but the success has to come from how you work with it, and above all is the company people ready.
— Bart Wessels Oct 17, 05:40 pm #
@Sid: Man, am I jealous of you having such a challenging position in these “interesting” times! Got to get me such a position too. Anyway, I guess you and your colleagues are already doing a very good job in explaining these new tools. We have to remind us also not to be too “pushing” with this. Lead by showing of some good small experimental case examples is my strategy for now.
@Bart: Thanks for your explanation and clarification about SharePoint. I fully agree with you on the relevance of being “people ready” as a company as a success factor. Do I correctly see a role for a corporate (communications) department, leading the way in this?
Didn’t know what OCS meant by the way, but now I do: Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007!
To the both of you: thanks for stopping by here and leaving the comment!
— Marcel Oct 17, 09:53 pm #
Hi Marcel,
well I completely agree with you. The technology is not going to be the hardest part, but change is. Change is about the people who will work with sharepoint on a regular basis with forms and flows, with documents and lists. Collaborating on projects, filling forms on travel expenses, ...
The wiki’s and blogs will only be used by a few people, like yourself! Most of them will not need to change because they already have.
— Robbert Dec 5, 05:39 pm #
Hi Robbert:
I am not sure “most people have already changed” and I do hope more people would at least comment on blogs!
Thanks for stopping by here!
— Marcel Dec 6, 01:49 pm #