The “All in One” SharePoint Guru does not exist – so stop looking and focus on plan B (Part 2 of 3)

This article is a continuation of Part 1 - Please read that article first. 

Phase 2: Planning

After the Envision Phase is completed, the Planning Phase starts, that requires a different set of skills.

If the Envision Phase is all about "What the Organisation wants", then the Planning Phase is about  "How are we going to give them what they want".

Successful projects (SharePoint or otherwise) places a lot of time into planning, on average, 20% of your entire project should be placed in the planning phase, if you get that right, the future phases is just about applying the plan.

The experts needed for this phase are as follows:

• Project Manager
• Business Analyst
• SharePoint Architect
• Infrastructure/network administrator
• Database administrator
• SharePoint Designer
• Steering Committee

From the last phase, the Business Analyst would have defined the scope and document what the organisation wants.  

In this phase, the SharePoint Architect is the key player.  The SharePoint Architect has a strong technical understanding of SharePoint and a strong understanding on how the business operate and what is required to meet the business needs. He/She understands how SharePoint can satisfy the user requirements, what configuration options are available and with that knowledge, define an approach.

With the assistance of the infrastructure/network administrator, database administrator, SharePoint Designer and a few other experts, the SP Architect will review the requirements and will define a detailed approach on how its going to get done.  The following analysis will take place:

• Define what existing infrastructure is available (i.e. Mail Server; Database Server)
• Define what infrastructure is required is meet the expected capacity (i.e. Traffic; hard disk space)
• Define quota’s, storage limits and file restrictions to control capacity
• Define approach for connecting via internet (if required)
• Design Site Topology needed to meet user requirements (i.e. # of SSP’s, Site Collections, Sub Sites required and the structure)
• Design Content and Navigation Structure
• Define branding requirements (need the assistance of a SharePoint Designer)
• Define the purpose of each site component in the topology and define what features are required
• Define what Data Topology is needed
• Define custom development requirements
• Define Content Type requirements
• Define Page Layout
• Define Brand and Brand Consistency
• Define Audience requirements
• Define Security configurations (Who needs what access to what)
• Define data view requirements
• Define what Search configuration is required
• What iFilters needs to be installed
• What content needs to be indexed
• Define Search Scopes
• Define Development and Test environment
• Plan for Change Management
• Awareness campaign
• Demonstrations
• Training approach
• Define Governance Plan
• Define integration approach (BDC, Excel Services, may need to communicate with Product Expert for integration options)
• Define Migration Approach
• Define Maintenance Plan

That’s a lot of information, once the SharePoint Architect has defined the approach, documented it and received acceptance from the stakeholders the Development Phase starts.

 Phase 3: Development

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