“Without proper architecture and governance, I can guarantee you that SharePoint will fail,” says Bob Mixon, President of Mixon Consulting, addressing the annual Enterprise 3 conference in San Diego this week.

“40-60% of SharePoint implementations fail (citing Gartner) – usually because it’s been improperly architected. If it balloons to several hundred or thousands of SharePoint sites then people will begin to complain that they cannot find anything.”

In fact, without proper governance, SharePoint can become the worst nightmare for intranet spawl police and those desperately trying to avoid the “wild, wild west.” One of Mixon’s clients complained to him, “We have 18,000 SharePoint sites and no one we can find anything!” (a complaint cited by more than one of Bob’s clients). 

The risks of intranet sprawl – and letting anyone to create a Team Site with no rules, guidance or governance – substantially undermine the value of an intranet:

·         Information is not aggregated by type or channel

·         Users will not be able to obtain relevant search results

·         Users will not know where to store or classify information

·         Users will not be able to find information through navigation

Mixon quickly points out that even Microsoft failed in their first iteration of SharePoint for their own intranet. “After one year, they had 60,000 intranet sites! They had to completely re-architect the entire intranet (MS Web).” (Editor's note: Team Site sprawl wasn't the sole reason behind the re-architecture of the MS intranet).

“The amount of information in your portal will grow over time and you will soon forget where information resides.”

To avoid intranet srpawl and information overload, Mixon recommends proper architecture, taxonomy creation, and governance. The other approach is to simply forgo these steps and dump all your documents into SharePoint

But Mixon says that not all information in an organization has to be classified. On average 40% should be classified according to the taxonomy. He also cautions publishers to not overuse met data: no more than 3 to 5 required metadata types. However, SharePoint does not allow users to tag content as of yet (not unlike how content is tagged on Flick, YouTube or using Deli.co.us), but its expected in the next release (expected in 2010).

Search will also not always relieve the challenges posed by information overload. Without proper context, your standard search engine can’t rate one document versus another. Even the great Google can’t save you from the deleterious affects of intranet sprawl. “Google Appliance will not work well with Sharepoint, Webshpere, PeopleSoft, etc. because it doesn’t know anything about context or security,” says Mixon. “I have clients that have spent $300,000 or $400,000 on a Google Appliance and then they end up unplugging it.”

To improve navigation and search, Mixon recommends a strong taxonomy, meta tagging and classification. “Content classification is the only means of providing us with:

• Context
• Relevant search results, reducing the amount of information searched using search scopes
• Aggregation of specific types of information

One of the most significant shortcomings of SharePoint is the ability to build a true taxonomy. Mixon points to the many benefits of a taxonomy and classification system:

• Holistic view of documents and related artifacts
• Document management services
• Activity audit trail
• Promotes consistent PM methodologies
• Promotes consistent use of templates
• Virtual collaboration amongst disparate groups
• Aggregation across multiple projects

Bob has made this presentation and others available for download on his blog:

http://www.bobmixon.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=61

RELATED READING:

SharePoint for communicators (webinar)

Advice for SharePoint customers

SharePoint governance & intranet ownership (MOSS 2007)

SharePoint requires proper architecture & governance

SharePoint overview (pros & cons, MOSS)

Why you should or shouldn’t choose Microsoft Sharepoint

SharePoint for Communicators

SharePoint: Truth or Fiction

SharePoint (MOSS 2007) Pros & Cons

SharePoint continues to be at the center of much of the intranet buzz – regardless of the water cooler, conference or country.

Shawn Shell, CEO of Consejo, and author of CMS Watch’s The SharePoint Report 2008 from CMS Watch, accurately summarizes SharePoint in one telling quote during his SharePoint presentation at Enterprise 3: “SharePoint does a lot of things, but it does very few things very well.”

I have maintained for sometime that SharePoint is an excellent intranet platform for departments, or small to medium-size enterprises. We in fact use it for our intranet at Prescient Digital Media (disclosure: we are fully technology-neutral with no partnerships nor reselling agreements with any technology vendor including Microsoft). But I don’t think that Sharepoint (MOSS 2007) is an appropriate enterprise intranet for medium to large organizations that need more robust content management, document management, and application integration. Nonetheless, SharePoint does have its strengths, and weaknesses, regardless of the client organization.

In no particular order, here are some of Shawn’s insights on SharePoint (and his company Consejo works almost exclusively on SharePoint implementations):

PROS:

• Biggest strength: collaboration features and forcing compliance with information management policies. 

OTHER STRENGTHS:

• Blogs are built into every My Site
• Wikis are out of the box
• Reports – the ability to display and work with data from an Xcel worksheet.
• Simple to use out-of-the-box
• Search is very fast
• Contributing content is simple
• Direct integration with Office (XP to 2007)
• Most functionality “exposed” through web services (e.g. all content can be subscribed to via RSS)
• Mobile views via a PDA or phone is out-of-the-box
• Alerts and workflow (though limited to email notification)
• WSRP and SAP integration is included

I would add that if you’re an enterprise Microsoft customer, you can get MOSS for very cheap if not free (but the licensing typically represents 10-30% of the total cost). As well, simple out-of-the-box SharePoint management needs little to no training.

CONS:

• Biggest weakness: Records management and digital asset management (non existent).

OTHER WEAKNESSES:

• The wiki piece is a little weak (“The rumor is that the wiki and blog components were very late additions… they work very well, but the functionality is considerably lower than what you would expect from an enterprise deployment.”)
• Sharepoint does not provide native support for AJAX (though there are work-arounds, MS will not support AJAX)
• Customization can be expensive and complex (and limited)
• Content management (“It’s very average content management… its not very fabulous.”)
• Analytics are very, very simple
• MOSS does cannot consume its own RSS feeds
  
• Non-Active Directory authentication capabilities
• Social networking built into MySites
• Search returns documents and people
• WSRP and SAP integration is not terribly strong, but it works. 

I would add the following weaknesses: immature technology, weak templates, and a reputation for weak service and training.

Shawn’s recommendations when considering or implementing SharePoint:

• Understand information quantities and needs
• Don’t just throw collaboration tools out there (he cited one client with “out-of-control” team sites and SharePoint sprawl)
• Establish & enforce standards for use
• Establish and closely monitor metrics for content creation
• Continually evaluate and adjust approach to match reality
• Enforce workspace use metrics
• Notify of non-use after 60 days
• Four notifications
• Delete after fourth notification
• Use workflow to suspend assets
• Re-map and migrate intranet sites into Sharepoint
• Use Search to Capture Outlying Sites
• Create a controlled vocabulary (taxonomy and meta data)
• Measure and measure again
• Track search requests against workgroup assets

By the way… the next version of Sharepoint will be released in 2010 along with Office version 14 (MS is superstitiously skipping version 13).

ADDITONAL READING:

Sharepoint to be the new Windows?

Why you should or shouldn’t choose Microsoft Sharepoint

Download the new Sharepoint; Vendor perception versus reality

JUST FOR FUN:

Here's a young kid who is a master impersonator (killer, really) who uses his celebrity voices when reading from the SharePoint marketing material:

http://www.spike.com/video/2869058?cmpnid=716&pt=sr&refsite=7103

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(SAN DIEGO, CA) Last week while working with my client at Nintendo’s U.S. headquarters (Seattle) I had the pleasure to test and play with the new Wii Fit (hits stores in the U.S. and Canada on May 21). It is a remarkable system that will spark a revolution in gaming (if that revolution has not already been sparked by the main Wii system). The centerpiece of the game is a balance board you stand on that tracks your weight and your movements (shifts in balance) as you play and exercise.

I was, to say the least, highly impressed. The balance board measures your weight, and along with your height that you manually input, tracks your BMI and helps produce exercise targets and a program for reducing your weight and BMI. Among the games I was exposed to was one on yoga that tracks your balance as you strike yoga poses on the board, and a soccer game where you have to shift your weight on the board to ‘head’ incoming soccer balls and avoid errant soccer boots (displayed on the television screen with the appearance of flying directly at you). The Wii-Fit launches with 40 games including others for skiing and snowboarding.

In April, 714,000 Wii stations were sold – almost double the sales of the Xbox and Playstation combined. The Wii Fit has already been sold-out online.

The Wii and Wii-Fit are changing gaming: no longer is gaming a sedentary pastime, but an active promoter of physical activity and fitness. I worked-up a minor sweat heading those soccer balls and got to thinking about the enterprise implications of using Wii as a corporate tool:

-         Training – using the Wii to remotely train employees for different tasks. For example, training manufacturing employees via simulated line functions.

-         Health & Wellness – incorporating the Wii Fit into health & wellness activities. For example, very few offices have a corporate gym, and cannot afford one. Instead of a gym, use the Wii Fit.

-         Product demos – using the Wii to create virtual product demos or games that mimic the product functionality. For example, downloading a slimmed-down game that demonstrates and mimics a super soaker water gun toy.

I have some other ideas, and there probably tons of possibilities and implications, but you get the drift. The Wii and Wii Fit are extraordinarily powerful systems and are destined to become as ubiquitous as the iPod.

READ MORE:

Wii Fit Debuts in US to Help Fight Flab

'Wii Fit' will definitely get you moving

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PS - Many more articles and blogs to come this week from the Enterprise3 conference here in San Diego... next up: Pros and Cons of Sharepoint.