SharePoint, the human way
January 14, 2010
I rarely read books that have product names in the title. However, SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration by Michael Sampson is an exception.
Michael approaches SharePoint the right way. From the top down. I mean that his main interest is collaboration. This means people and how they work together. He then talks about SharePoint in that context.
This is a book that can and should be read by business, communication and IT managers in any organization considering or currently implementing SharePoint.
It will help them all speak the same language, which is often a major obstacle when turning concepts into practice whatever the technology.
User adoption
I was especially interested in some original ideas about user adoption (page 164). His ideas are action-oriented: learn by doing, learn now and fast. Very little abstract “consultant speak” about the importance of collaboration.
For example, he talks about “bulk loading parties” where you bring content owners together for a few days to migrate content into the new SharePoint environment. People learn the system fast and users are not faced with two parallel systems over a long time period.
An idea I like a lot is “facilitated group re-imagining“. It’s easier than it sounds! It means getting groups or teams together to discover how they work today, then define – with them – how they can work in the new SharePoint context. This lets teams define their way of working together. As Michael says, “Getting an intact group to agree on working in a different way is critical to success.”
Michael will be at IntraTeam Event in March in Copenhagen running a workshop on “Crafting your user adoption strategy. He will give a talk on Frameworks for Evaluating Collaboration Tools.
He will be in Europe during the full month of March. You can get in touch with him directly if you’d like to meet him or organize a SharePoint session with him.
P.S. 22:30 Just got a phone call from Michael who told me he’ll only be in Europe for 2 weeks and has just a few more slots in his schedule. So get in touch with him soon if you’d like to arrange a meeting.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:18 am
Jane, thanks for your review above, much appreciated.
As a follow on to SharePoint Roadmap, I have started working on “SharePoint Roadmap Governance Themes” (see http://www.sharepointroadmap.com/governance.html). The first theme was published today … Site Creation Rights. More information here … http://www.sharepointroadmap.com/governance-sitecreationrights.html
See you in 6 weeks at IntraTeam!
M.