SharePoint

Thoughts on a SharePoint 2007 Operating Model

Rob Foster — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 04:06:53 GMT

What is it about "SharePoint" as a platform that is so difficult? I hear this almost every time that you get more than zero SharePoint people in a room. Quite possibly the most frustrating thing about SharePoint for me is the way that companies (not all, but some) view the SharePoint platform as well as staff and train for an operating model around SharePoint itself. A lot of companies are somewhat inadequately staffed or at least inadequately skilled for a full on SharePoint implementation, so I have a list of thoughts that I see out there in the trenches.

#1:
First Question: "SharePoint IS built around a bunch of technologies that we already have in house (referring to ASP.NET, C#, IIS, SQL Server, etc.). We have these skills...it's just about learning another object model, so let's just send our people to class and then they will be SharePoint people too."

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!...This is quite possibly the first and easiest mistake that is made with a SharePoint implementation. Yes, you are likely to have ASP.NET and C# skills in house, but that's not all that is required. SharePoint is a platform that builds on top of ASP.NET. This means that your teams will need to be proficient in ASP.NET before beginning to learn how to develop SharePoint applications (yes, I’ve actually talked with people who think that they can just jump into SharePoint development with no prior web development experience).

With the SharePoint platform, there are MANY disciplines in development, so pick one or two development areas to begin with and then expand from there (TIP: start with web parts, event receivers, and FEATURES). Design for performance and scalability is an essential skill with SharePoint, especially when developing for lists that contain a lot of data.

You will still need to staff for operations, support, usability (e.g. screen designers, which could also be developers), architects, etc. Rolling out SharePoint is a big deal both technically and organizationally (once your users get a taste of the platform, it WILL take off like wildfire). Point of this question...GET YOUR PEOPLE THE PROPER TRAINING!!!! There are several companies that offer training and I would like to highlight 4 of the best: Ted Pattison Group, MindSharp, Combined Knowledge, and SharePoint Solutions. All offer a great lineup of classes with world class instructors, so don't be afraid to reach out to these guys for help, it just could save you a lot of time and effort later on down the road.

So Exchange is a platform and SharePoint is a platform, why can't we just build out our infrastructure like we did for Exchange and be done? Well, technically the first part of the question is correct in that SharePoint and Exchange are both platforms...That's about it. Mind you, they are two different platforms. Exchange is a fairly static platform in that (in most cases) you are basically managing email and calendars for a relatively fixed set of users in your organization (yes, user count will go up and down, but it's not a major deal to capacity plan for users and their mail/calendars/public folders/etc.). SharePoint, on the other hand is a very dynamic platform in that you can have many users and at the same time, those users can have the ability to create sites (which can contain sub sites, documents, lists, workflows, etc.). This means that whatever your SharePoint infrastructure looks like today will not be what it looks like tomorrow, and will definitely not be what it looks like a month from now.

Comparing the operating model of SharePoint to Exchange is very bad, even though it's done a lot. Let's step back a little bit...Shouldn't we really be somewhat comparing the operating model to a product like SAP (not on as large of a scale with much different disciplines, of course)? I think that the SAP guys have it right. With SAP, there are developers that are specialized in a module of SAP (HR, Finance, etc.) and a configuration team that help “customize” or configure each module. There is also very specialized support staff, as well as administrators; all of these people are dedicated resources to any platform.

Arguably, the SAP model this is a correct approach for the SharePoint platform. Developers should specialize in a discipline of SharePoint development (BDC, Excel Services, Web Parts, etc.), you can also have configuration experts that are experts in setting up and operating the platform as well as administrators that are responsible for the platform governance. My point in answering this question is that SharePoint is a very large platform and no one can know it all very deeply…you will find little pockets of expertise with the platform, but at this time people just can’t be an expert in all things SharePoint.

What about Development tools for SharePoint? I love this one, actually because it somewhat highlights something that I have seen building up over time as the development tools get better and better. Let me start off by saying that I think that Visual Studio 2008 is the best IDE that the world has ever seen, hands down. This yields both good and bad results, though. Good results are better developer productivity (and so on...too many to list, VS2008 really rocks). Bad results are developers are not always required to understand what is happening behind the scenes. Yes, Visual Studio does a lot of stuff for you. For example, When was the last time that you compiled a project using the CSC.EXE command-line tool? You don't really have to understand what is happening during compilation because Visual Studio takes the pain out of this process. Developer productivity has never been at a higher level.

So if Visual Studio 2008 is so great, why does development suck for the most part for the SharePoint developers? As bad as I hate to say it, the out of the box Visual Studio development experience for SharePoint is somewhat lacking. Out of the box, there just isn’t a lot of cool SharePoint dev stuff that ships with Visual Studio. We all know it and Microsoft has heard your feedback on this topic. We will just have to see what happens in the Visual Studio roadmap to compensate for this need. So if there is a need for a tool for Visual Studio and developers are the primary users of Visual Studio, you’d better believe that tools will start to pop up to help us out.

Two of such tools to get you started (there are > 200 on CodePlex alone!) are WSPBuilder and STSDev. These are both tool that will help you develop features in Visual Studio and I have used them both extensively. While you are on CodePlex, search for SharePoint and see what you get returned. At the time of this blog, there are over 200 tools that are out there specifically for SharePoint! Granted these are open source projects but don’t be fooled…a lot of these things really rock and can save you a lot of time, so go check them out now (after you finish reading this blog of course!).

Ease into your SharePoint implementation. Another common mistake that companies make with SharePoint implementations is that they want too much too quickly. Start out slow with a base SharePoint deployment and slowly make your way into the custom development stuff. You might consider rolling out out of the box features such as Team Sites, My Sites, and Search to your users first before you start into your first custom SharePoint application. Trust me, your operations folks will thank you for waiting so that they can get their arms around MOSS before developers start chunking there newly developed DLLs at the platform.

These are only 4 (really) random thoughts to consider when creating an operating model (administration, operations, development, etc) for MOSS. Please let me know your thoughts, challenges, and successes by implementing SharePoint in your enterprise. We can all benefit from more of these types of conversations.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2008 Extensions, Version 1.2 available now

Rob Foster — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:40:25 GMT

Get them here.

There are no new features, other than this works with Visual Studio 2008.

MS SharePoint Developer site is live!

Rob Foster — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:25:48 GMT

Check out this site. It has a lot of great information pertaining to SharePoint 2007 Development. There are hands on labs, VPCs, and a lot of information about developing on SharePoint 2007. All for free!

Thanks to the SharePoint team for getting this site up and running!

TechEd: Spring Break for Nerds...

Rob Foster — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 05:45:45 GMT

I have to call out this funny blog from Mike Houston. So true...see if you can find me and a few other SHAREPOINT NATION folks in the pics. :-)

We are SharePoint Nation!!!!

Rob Foster — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:04:32 GMT

If you have been following my tweets (or have been anywhere around me since MVP Summit), you have likely heard me randomly screaming in my very obvious Nashville accent "SHAREPOINT NATION!", especially at events/conferences and such (they typically frown on me randomly screaming it at work). :-)

Here is a little insight. SharePoint Nation is a name that we started giving to all of us SharePoint folks as we seem to connect at conferences, events, etc. and somehow are bonded by the product that we work with everyday. It was really apparent at MVP summit when they were constantly trying to break us up by region (i.e. US, Europe, Asia, etc.) as well as TechEd 2008 this year. We all somehow connected and ended up having a lot of fun (and a couple of times actually saw the sun rise...yeah...it was a lot of late nights). Despite the free food and drinks at Summit, ALL of the SharePoint people refused to be separated into regions and ended up connecting elsewhere and doing our own thing. For example, we missed the first day of pre-conference stuff just to go play paintball!

THAT is what being a part of SharePoint Nation is all about. Connecting with people who have a common bond (in this case, it's SharePoint), despite your background, home town, personal beliefs, etc. and making friendships that stick. Maybe it is because we are collaboration people (e.g. SharePoint is a collaboration product), maybe not...I have made friendships that go way beyond people that you meet up with a conferences...Do you have to be a SharePoint MVP, author, or speaker? OF COURSE NOT! Whenever you see us out (we usually travel in large groups) join up, hang out, and have a good time! We are a fun bunch to hang out with.

We are SharePoint Nation!

TechEd 2008 Jam Sessions

Rob Foster — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 03:12:25 GMT

Just in case you missed it, Jam Sessions rocked for a bit this year. The band started out by playing some classic rock (Skynyrd, Creedence, etc.) when I got there with some of my SharePoint Nation brothers. Jeff Julian pointed out to me that Denny Boynton was a great drummer (Denny and I had previously had a phone interview where I was the interviewee a year or so ago). With this in mind (and knowing that Denny had NO idea who I was or that he had interviewed me) I told him to jump on drums and we were going to rock something.

Knowing that I wanted to play something from the classic rock era, I brought my TS-808 overdrive pedal, plugged in and grabbed something with a fixed bridge (this time it was a black Telecaster with CRAPPY strings). The band went into "Sweet Home Alabama", which gave me time to warm up the fingers a bit. After "SHA", everyone looked at each other like "what do we play next". There was some discussion and I just walked over to my amp, kicked in the TS-808 and started the intro to AC/DC's "Highway to Hell".

At this point, I immediately felt an electricity in the air...Denny kicked in with a heavy riff on drums and the bass player jumped in as well. After a few times through the intro, literally out of nowhere a guy jumped on stage who had a real look of a true rocker. He looked at me (who was getting nervous that no one was going to be able to sing) and said "we've got this!". After that, it was all gravy. He layed into the intro vocals and literally blew the roof off of The Groove in Orlando. I've played with a lot of people before, but have never played with someone who had the Brian Johnson vocals down so well.

After Highway to Hell, we stopped for a few seconds to take in the crowd as they were going nuts at this point (before we started playing, they were mostly just standing there doing nothing). While they were still cheering and screaming, I couldn't let it stop, so I immediately started AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long". Again, the vocals were spot on. Again, the crowd went nuts.

We finished up with "Little Wing" by Hendrix which was OK, but I really got to be somewhat artistic with the lead guitar and have a good musical conversation with the lead singer during one of the verses. What was cool was all of us have never played together, and mostly never met! Music is such a great language in that you can always seem to talk to each other, no matter your background.

The next day when I was working the OBA booth at TechEd, I saw the lead singer walk by and we introduced ourselves. His name is Allan Pedersen from Denmark and his band's web site is located here and they ROCK!

Denny you rocked it, man! Great chops!

Allan...Jeez, you should bring your band to Nashville to launch your career. I've never had the honor of playing with such a great vocalist. Great job, mate!

If you have any pictures or videos from the show, post 'em up and let me know where to find them! I'd love to see it again!

Nashville SharePoint Users Group

Rob Foster — Fri, 30 May 2008 01:55:46 GMT

We have started a SharePoint Users Group in Nashville!!! Visit the site here!

SharePoint FireStarter @ TechEd IT Pro week!

Rob Foster — Thu, 29 May 2008 02:19:11 GMT

More information about this event can be found here.

Twitter Features that Should Exist for Enterprise Social Networking

Rob Foster — Sun, 25 May 2008 01:10:19 GMT

What can I say, I am totally addicted to Twitter and the way that it has changed the way that we communicate. I seem to post at least once a day and see what my tweeps (people that I follow and are following me) are up to at least 10 times per day. Yes, it's still somewhat progressive for the mainstream crowd, but its adoption is really taking off. One question that I have is: "So what's next with Twitter?"

I've been pondering this for a few weeks as I dive deeper into the true enterprise social networking (ESN) world and what would REALLY be a nice addition for Twitter would be the capability to create an isolated group made up from from your tweeps list so that you can create a quick little private conversation that's not accessable to the world. This could change the way that we meet and collaborate on idea, especially in the ESN space.

Another future addition that I think you could add to Twitter would be the ability to integrate into your enterprise collaboration platforms (note that idea 1 would likely have to be implemented first to ensure a private conversation can be held). Being a SharePoint guy, I love the capability of being able to create a document workspace around a document that lives in a document library so that I can collaborate with my team on a particular document. You can create a discussion, change the document, post meeting announcements around the collaboration effort, etc. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to collaborate over that same document with Twitter from wherever you are in the world?

Yes, I know that there are other ways to solve these problems (like throwing back to the old-school way of just sending an EMAIL), but I like options and ESN options for Twitter is just somethiing that I don't have. :-)

5 Rules to Live By When Interviewing for a SharePoint Job

Rob Foster — Fri, 23 May 2008 02:28:44 GMT

There are a ton of blogs out there that tell you "questions to ask when interviewing a SharePoint person" which will help give you a baseline for what you should know technically. However, technical interview questions are somewhat easy to answer if you have done enough of them. I am not talking about the technical part of the interview, i'm more talking about how you are selling yourself as a SharePoint person to a client, which is important for you, but mostly important for the client in which you are interviewing.

Rule 1: Know your specialty

The SharePoint platform is huge. I mean HUGE. You can specialize in most anything and just because you are a specialist in one area, you can't be grandfathered in as being a specialist in another area. For example, I specialize in SharePoint as it pertains to Social Networking and My Sites. Does this make me an expert in Web Content Management (WCM) or the Business Data Catalog (BDC)? OF COURSE NOT! Being honest, I haven't done much with the BDC, don't claim to be an expert, don't want to be (I'll leave that to Nick Swan). :-) Know your specialty, be an expert in that specialty and then expand out. This can win you a lot of points and can give you a way to provide your client or potential employeer real value.

Rule 2: Try to understand what the client is trying to do with SharePoint

Ask questions during the interview, but don't give advice unless asked. Giving advice without fully understanding the environment that you are in can easily cause you to tank the interview. Even if you have answered everything perfectly, you can easily leave an impression that you are careless and don't think through situations if you "shoot from the hip".

Rule 3: Do not BS your answers

You would think that this is obvious, but folks I'm here to say that this happens more than not. If this is applicable to you, one of two things are going to happen.
Scenario 1: There is somewhat of a lack of understanding of the SharePoint platform in the management levels (e.g. the people that you will likely talk to at some point in your interview) that you can likely use some snazzy buzzwords and make it through. However, when the rubber meets the road and you actually have to deliver a solution, you can quickly get in over your head and will either not deliver or deliver something that doesn't scale, doesn't work, or is just screwed up.

Scnerio 2: During the interview, someone that is interviewing you understands the platform and knows you're blowing smoke. End result: you won't get the gig and could hurt your chances for future gigs in that segment of the market. Let's face it, being a SharePoint person is a small community of people (compared to larger technologies like ASP.NET, C#, etc.) and they do talk (we're collaboration people, remember!).

Bottom line, just be honest. If you don't know, just say so...Being in an interview (of any type) is not like an evening at the improv.

Rule 4: You can't save the world with SharePoint, don't sell it that way

Yes, the SharePoint platform can do a lot and offers a lot to the enterprise. Don't try to go in and cure cancer with SharePoint. SharePoint implementations require a lot of planning and design to ensure success. That's right folks...Despite the myths, SharePoint IS a platform that is constantly evolving and companies must plan for this. This rule is more for companies than for people that are interviewing. Bottom line is that if someone tries to come in and solve all of your business problems with SharePoint in something crazy like 2 weeks, you might want to think very hard before making the decision to hire.

Rule 5: Constantly hone your craft

As with any product or platform, you are going to experience some ups and downs with SharePoint. Use this experience and learn from your successes and mistakes. It will help you in the future. Also, highlight these experiences in your interview. How did you solve a problem when your SharePoint application took a nose dive?

Hopefully that it will give you something to think about as well as help you out when you go for that next SharePoint job.