Learn to Walk...

Kyle Brodbeck — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 14:19:00 GMT

    Before trying to run. Isn't that how the saying goes? Unfortunately, the impetus for SharePoint projects tend to be either very specific or extremely broad, neither of which extremes are conducive to building the necessary understanding for a successful implementation. The former forces one to look at SharePoint solely through the lens of the particular issue at hand. This is quite a common approach for assessing the value of any product... Answering the question, “How well does it meet our needs?” So, it seems like a positive, right? Well, that is until you sit down and actually attempt to build the solution. Oh, how frustrating those first few steps can be! It’s been my experience that firms going down this path actually tend to underestimate the overall value of SharePoint. You’re not alone if you feel as though SharePoint does 80% of everything and 100% of nothing. Enter one of SharePoint’s greatest assets, its extensibility.
    By contrast, looking at SharePoint from too broad of a perspective can result in an overestimation of its “out of the box” capabilities and an underestimation of the additional resources required. After all, SharePoint looks like the holy grail of products at first glance (and some will legitimately argue that in many cases it is, especially if you’re primarily a Microsoft shop)! Between Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server you have a relatively inexpensive portal with personalization, a fully fledged collaborative environment, a knowledge management solution, etc. However, despite its extensive functionality, there is still much to be done.
    My first experience with SharePoint had a very specific driver when a request came through for a document management solution. I immediately found myself running into one roadblock after the next. How does one programmatically upload documents, create document libraries, and folders? Can the upload file size limit be circumvented? SharePoint's search looks great, but how do I create a custom search? How do I associate metadata (not to mention large amounts of data that require text data types or data that may exist in a different SQL database) with an uploaded file? Then there are those tasks that one would think should be downright simple, and in fact they may very well be, but are agonizingly difficult due to the foreign nature of SharePoint. So, with the product still in beta and very little documentation available, off I went trying to reverse engineer SharePoint. Oh wait, shouldn’t I figure out what SharePoint is first? I’ll discuss this project (and many of its mistakes) along with some of the other issues I mention here over my next couple posts.
    One last thought… Tackling SharePoint, a product which represents a paradigm shift on so many fronts, necessitates an open mind from everyone involved. This ranges from the stakeholders and project managers to IT and the developers. Yes, a few simple tasks appear to be more difficult and cryptic then they were in the past (also to be discussed later). However, more times than not it merely requires a different way of thinking. In all its robustness SharePoint can change the way a firm does business, and even in its most limited form, it will at least make current processes more efficient.

Kyle

Getting Started

Learn to Walk...