Johnny Harbieh

Today, I would like to share with you a couple of thoughts on the subject of how to approach a Portals and Collaboration project in relationship to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007). Over the years, many approaches have been developed on how to deploy solutions based on SharePoint Technologies. Aside from the normal project management methodologies and concepts, there are really a couple of approaches that stand out to me; the platform perspective and the niche point-solution. 

From a platform perspective, to deploy SharePoint in your organization, you ought to define your vision very well. Looking at SharePoint from the perspective of the business requires time and energy. It is the view by which SharePoint becomes THE enterprise solution of choice that enhances your user’s productivity and streamlines your most complex business processes. It becomes a business productivity tool. This view leads us to think in terms of the platform and what else can we do to integrate better and provide value across the business landscape. Thinking platform means looking at consolidating your set of technologies and supporting resources and applications into one domain, and in some cases, it also means a different way of doing business.

The niche point-solution view is about deploying SharePoint to meet a single business need or requirement that is very unique to a vertical or space. It meets the current need and it doesn’t take a lot of time to plan and deploy either. This approach is about bringing in results immediately. From a very high level, this approach can be deployed on a departmental level with a future roadmap in mind to help integrate it with other Line of Business applications. These types of solutions may be considered to prove the bigger picture and to allow decision makers to really work on and mature their technology initiatives.

In summary, many inner variations that branch out of the above approaches come to mind as we discuss the different ways of deploying SharePoint. My hope is to explore some of those variations with all of you in the weeks and months to come. Till then, take it easy.

Notes: This post was taken from my entry on our AIC Community Blog

-Johnny