That O365 Guru from Cape Town (#NadirKamdar)

You want a new Intranet, You now need to design a solution, the area you consider most important when designing a solution will probably be the following … A strong Home Page with dynamic content for everyone in the organisation A detailed sitemap so users can easily navigate to the content they are looking for It makes sense, an entry point that is dynamic with content and contains a navigational menu that allows you to access additional information seem like the makings of a good intranet site.  Right? Well, the answer to that question would be yes, if you were building an Intranet 3 years ago.  End user behavior has changed so much since then, that their expectations and interaction with the Intranet is now very different, meaning that your approach when designing a solution needs to adjust to match their new expectations. You don’t believe me?  I don’t blame you.  But the signs are there, and we need to stop using that 10 year old approach when desig...

We have already established that there is a shortage of SharePoint skills; my post on that topic has been my most popular post to date. This problem becomes the root cause of other problems, and the problem I want to focus on today is the fact that the shortage of SharePoint skills places your existing SharePoint team in high demand and if proper steps are not taken to retain this staff, consider them lost. It’s unfortunate but true, due to lack of training available, the number of new SharePoint players entering the market is low (and still needs a lot of work before they can add real value to projects), so in order for a company to deliver on a SharePoint need, they need to use existing SharePoint players, and in order to do that, they need to figure out who’s the competitors key players, and make them an offer they cannot refuse. Sometimes these “offers they cannot refuse” are ridiculously high, meaning that a counter offer is out of the question, so the big question I’m placi...

Proper project planning and process management is essential for successful projects, but after working on SharePoint projects for over 4 years now, I have discovered some common pitfalls, some unique to SharePoint projects while others are general issues that seem to pop up more frequently in SharePoint projects. The following are some common pitfalls and some tips to help make the project more successful (please note that some of these pitfalls has been mentioned in previous posts, and this posts aims to summarize my findings). Pitfall #1: You are NOT using SharePoint correctly One of the first things people must understand about SharePoint is that Microsoft did not create SharePoint as a replacement of their existing offering. Microsoft created SharePoint for fulfill an organizational need, and they were clever enough to create in is such a manner that it complements (NOT replaces) there other offerings. Lets look at an example and focus on Intranets, before ShareP...

I have been studying project management in the last few months; the course is very interesting but works on the assumption that you are a project manager working on projects for your organisation. In my case, that is not true. I work for a consultant (outsourcing) company, meaning that the “projects” I work on is really for the benefit of my client’s organisation and this small distinction makes a big difference in how the project manager handles the project. Firstly, let’s look at the purpose of a project. For an organisation to finally decide to invest into a project the organisation must see that the success in the project will lead to the success of the organisation; the project also needs to fit strategically within the organisation, the following considerations needs to take place: Does the project fit with the organisation’s technology architecture? Does the project follow corporate standards, policies and methods? Can the project last with the organisation’s business...

My current role involves more than just department and project management. it also involves pre-sales demonstrations. Prepping for a demonstration is very time consuming and very difficuly, especially since its not my primary job function. Over time, I managed to define an approach that produces great demonstrations with minimal prep time. I am going to share this approach with you. This approach is constantly improving and I value any feedback and recommendations you may have that can help me improve this approach. 1. Do not re-invent the wheel. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, focused on SharePoint and ASP.NET solutions.  My demonstrations are focused on showing off Microsoft products. If my pre-sale demonstration leads to a sale, my Company and Microsoft wins. Microsoft is aware of this and they want my demonstrations to Rock! If fact, it’s in there best interest to build detailed demonstrations for me, and that’s exactly what they did. Go to the following si...

This article is a continuation of Part 2 - Please read that article first. Phase 3: Development   In the development phase, the solution is built according to the specifications defined by the architect (As defined in Part 2 ).   The development phase requires 2 key players, the SharePoint Administrator and the SharePoint Developer.  Yes - this is two different roles with two different skill sets.  You may want to add SharePoint data-capturer to the list so basic tasks like deploying a taxonomy and site population can be completed by a cheaper resource, allowing the higher skilled resources to spend time on more complex requirements. The SharePoint Administrator The SharePoint Administrator focus is on the setting up, configuration and management of services running on SharePoint.  Anything available "out of the box" from SharePoint can be deployed by the SharePoint Administrator, which should be at least 80% of the entire solution.  (If anyth...

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...