1. Robin McManus

3. SharePoint without purpose is pointless.
You are not actually installing SharePoint, you are
creating a system to do something functional and
SharePoint is the medium in which to achieve that goal.
The word SharePoint is generally banned during
Requirements Gathering workshops and Stakeholder
meetings and remember the client has all the answers,
they just do not realise it at the time.

4.  Why are we changing the existing systems
 Can SharePoint actually deliver the proposed solution
OOTB
 Developing the additional features, do we really have
the skills on board
 Development is generally a journey into the
unknown, how long it will it really take
 GAP Analysis and what is really missing
 Don’t talk about great looking sites, talk about really
functional Sites

5. We now have the choice between Cloud and On-
Premises but whatever the choice, licensing costs and
your existing IT and support infrastructure will be a
major influence on deciding the new Systems and
which Office 365 Plan to purchase.
On-Premises Requires
 Servers
 Client Access Licence
 Application Software
 Data Storage
 Redundancy
 Backup
 Staging Farms
 Development and Sandpit
Office 365 Includes
 5 licences for Office Applications
 SharePoint Enterprise
 Office 365
 Exchange
 Lync
 Access to Yammer (Requires Additional
Licence)
 Federated Services
 Disk Storage

6. Which or your sponsors are decision makers, find out
who you are dealing with and try to understand
what they expect from the project, why are they in
this role and how can you get the best out of them.
Find out from the Audience the role that best fits,
Decision Makers (Financial / Functional), Project
Managers, Team Sponsors, Developers, Product
Support, Application Support, Architecture, training
and documentation and discuss their input in a
SharePoint project.

7. Understand the Methodology in which the
Client team member is communicating and
how familiar are they with the process.
 Prince (Projects in Controlled environments)
 ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure
Library)
 Agile Unified Process (AUP); Dynamic Systems
Development Method (DSDM)
 TOGAF The Open Group Architecture Framework
 ISO (International Organization for Standardization)

13. Information Architecture, one of the first words I
learnt at the beginning of my SharePoint journey.
Information Architecture will translate into Content
Types which are the building blocks for grouping
columns which are used in Libraries and Lists.
In reality you never create a column at the list or
library level you simply configure a content type and
add it to the List or Library

14. You can have a functional Layer (Getting it to
work) and the Business layer (the control
implied) where governance must be a part of
the requirements gathering and integrated into
the design.
 Security
 Auditing
 Reliability
 Usability
 Supportability

15. An individual artefact cannot be described as
anything in particular but encapsulates everything as
the individual parts of your architectural design.

16.  Pillar 1 - Corporate Strategy
 Pillar 2 - Change Management Process
 Pillar 3 - Back Office Administration
 Pillar 4 - Training
 Pillar 5 - Clear Ownership
 Pillar 6 - Technical Development Process
 Pillar 7 – Ongoing Maintenance Tasks
http://ezinearticles.com/?Seven-Pillars-of-
SharePoint&id=4672281

17. Once the Sites have been built the need for
reporting arises and the client has most likely
seen the promotional material outlining the
great reports that SharePoint provides but this
cannot be done on the fly.
Business Intelligence is a major topic which
baffles most IT technicians and requires the
enterprise version before you even start.
Reporting must be a part of your requirements
gathering process.

18. Installing SharePoint is a complex process and
you must be able to document and replay this
procedure exactly, you will also add servers
and change the topology as your Farm grows.
Two Codeplex tools which I use extensively
are AutoSPInstaller (Brian Lalancette /
Andrew Woodward) and
AutoSPInstallerGUI (Ivan Josipovic)

19. A SharePoint project will never close, it
just keeps going on and on which makes
sense, so remember you have started the
SharePoint Journey and at some point
you must Close the initial project and
move to a Change Management Process.
Why is this important?

20. Questions