What I want to do in this post is to walk through some ways to avoid the if we build it mentality and better tailor your SharePoint implementation to the people who matter the most — the end users.
There are four broad activity areas you need to focus on to not only understand your end-users’ needs, but have a fighting chance of meeting them as well:
- User Segmentation
- Use Case Analysis
- Technology Mapping
- Training and Communication
Nicely written piece on the aspects of SharePoint planning that tend to fall through the cracks.
Interesting that these are best practices followed by the typical user-advocacy roles that have been around for years (usability, online help, documentation, training, change management, etc.).
The difference here, from my perspective, lies in the tendency for these concerns to be “tacked on” to the project after the fact — and ultimately squeezed when budgets overrun elsewhere. Software teams and their executive stakeholders have a sense of the results they want from the tool and will focus exclusively on those ends. Adoption is abysmally slow as a result.
With an endlessly configurable platform solution such as SharePoint, there are no concrete “ends” to speak of. Implement once and empower vertically, is the model.
It is the responsibility of the SharePoint end-user community to develop its own pool of expertise, its own minimum capability standards under proper governance, its own collaboration maturity trajectory. It is equally the responsibility of line of business management to set goals, enable the creative conditions, and then get out of the way.