Understanding SharePoint Users' Work Systems

By lolly doll

Lisa is a manager with one of my clients in Denver. I met her during a site visit, where I was supervising the implementation of SharePoint 2007. The client was excited about using a collaboration platform because they had many teams and their work involved intensive collaboration between team members.

Our SharePoint developers customized SharePoint based on approved specifications provided by their management team. After the installation was complete, one of our developers remained at the client´s site for another month to ensure smooth transition and resolve migration issues. The next month, I started calling them every week to find out how things were functioning. Though there were no complaints, there was no enthusiasm about working with SharePoint either. The following month I decided to visit their office. I scheduled a lunch with Lisa before getting into a meeting with them.

Before I continue, let me share with you a little something about my faucets. There are half a dozen faucets in my apartment. They are simple devices with simple operations; when you turn them on, they let the water out and when you turn them off, they stop the water from flowing. They are made up of simple parts such as washers, valves, and nuts. Yet, when they start dripping, it gets pretty irritating until a plumber gets home and fixes it. If a faucet is such a simple device, so why can´t fix it myself? I do have a wrench. Knowing something is simple and having a wrench, doesn´t help when you don´t know how to go about fixing a problem. What worse has to explain a problem you can´t identify? This applies to SharePoint users as well.

At lunch, Lisa told me that she had been given additional responsibilities. She was now handling two more projects. What she said next shocked me. She said, 'I have a difficult time remembering, who is doing what on my projects. I ask my team members the same questions so many times that it is now getting embarrassing.' We had installed SharePoint in her organization. Metaphorically, they had the wrench. They knew that it was a collaborative platform. But they couldn´t connect it to the ways in which it can be used.

Later, when I checked Lisa´s SharePoint Home page, I found out from the Site Actions menu that she only had the right to upload and download documents! All she needed was some training and SharePoint rights to create team sites. Once she was able to create a team site for every project, she could assign rights to her team members to upload their calendars, schedule their tasks, participate in discussions, upload documents, and so on. As a site owner, she would be able to view everyone´s schedule and know what each person was up to without asking them again and again. Based on team members´ schedules, she could easily schedule new tasks or reassign them to different tasks based on any change in priorities. Depending on the type of collaboration between team members, SharePoint can also be customized to provide limited access or full access to other team members.

Clients may not understand the implications of the all the SharePoint features. They may not have to knowledge to apply their work situation to SharePoint. On that project, our organization realized the importance of studying and understanding end users work systems before implementing SharePoint. It was a learning experience we never forgot. Thankfully, we were able to convince the client to go in for a study and some more customization, which made their investment in SharePoint a positive experience.

It is extremely important for SharePoint customized solution providers to present SharePoint 2010´s immense collaborative possibilities and help the client and its end users derive maximum benefit.

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