SharePoint Deployment(s) who should be involved what should be considered?
Before you start your SharePoint deployment you should include the following people from within your organisation in a planning session.
If you are doing a simple proof of concept type if implementation then it is not a must but it is recommended as typically at POC stage you don’t want to involve too many resources.
However if the POC is part of a strategic organisational decision such as choosing a intranet portal platform then you definitely must involve the following people below.
**Technical level **
IT Pro – Who understands the security and firewall configurations and Internal security policies (Including Active Directory), network topologies in your organisation. If your organisations IT infrastructure is managed externally as part of a managed services offering then the technical architect who is responsible for your organisation needs to be involved.
Database administrator (DBO) – Basically if you have a dedicated DBO they need to know how many databases SharePoint creates and why? Which databases require to be backed up on a regular basis? How growth and capacity can be planned.
Web site administrator – This is the person who will take over the day to day operations of SharePoint such as administering site usage and also assisting users when required. Ideally this person should have a good understanding of IIS, ASP.net and general web development practices. And it goes without saying this person needs to know about SharePoint administration.
Web developer – Proficient in ASP.Net development, web parts and understands the SharePoint API.
Third party Technical Consultants – If you do not have internal expertise in SharePoint then one of the best options is to seek out a technical consultant who has done prior deployments of SharePoint. This is one of the best cost effective ways of reviewing your deployment. My basic concern is where SharePoint is chosen and implemented very poorly. Then the next most typical scenario is to blame the technology. By allowing some budget for a SharePoint expert to review your architecture such scenarios can be easily avoided.
**Business Side **
Project Manager – We always needs one of them to keep things in line to what your deployment is going to be finally.
**Business Analyst – **Should be someone with prior experience in articulating business requirements and how these can be realised in Intranets and Portals. Ideally a champion of Collaboration software or should at least have used an online collaboration program and not necessarily SharePoint.
Business Owner – Ideally someone who has been part of the organisation for period of time longer than one year. Who can understand the limitations and implications of what the business is trying to achieve. Someone who can make the hard decisions, know when to pull back people who bring unattainable business requirements.
Most important who has a realistic budget!
I have been to many meetings with clients who basically has seen a demo of SharePoint and think that it’s easy to just install and run. (Thanks to pre canned demos). Well yes it is but you probably won’t get any real tangible business value if you take this approach.
My best advice is to do some planning then do some more planning. Do a small controlled POC. Get feedback from the end users. After all it’s the users who will have to live in SharePoint after it’s implemented.
Then establish a project team who can deliver the requirements and phase out the deployment. Don’t get hung up on site design and things that don’t work. For each single thing that SharePoint may not do out of the box there can be 5 things that allow users to carry out tasks easily.
**What needs to be planned? **
Microsoft TechNet has the following planning guidelines books for download.
**Product Evaluation Guide **
Basically this is where you draw out what it is that you are planning to POC. This may be a simple business requirement such as:
Creating a document in a document library and starting an approval workflow.
**Technical Library **
This features the most recently published content for detailed guidelines.
**For latest articles on TechNet go to **
**Design Logical Architecture for Collaboration Sites **
Features details on how to create a collaboration environment for an Intranet scenario.