Think of SharePoint Server as plastic.
If you have a vision for what you want
SharePoint to become and you carefully
define that mold based on features
in the product, then you can
mold SharePoint into virtually anything
you want.
But what happens if you don't have
a mold? It turns into goo.
Think of SharePoint service models
as the molds. IT shops have turned
to service models to give SharePoint
consistency and standards. Service
models work hand in hand with governance
to shape each SharePoint
deployment into a unique installation
that meets business needs.
And what happens if you have no
service models for SharePoint or rules
for IT governance in place? You will
likely experience "SharePoint anarchy."
The problem lies with those who
underestimate the power of a SharePoint deployment and its influence
on an organization. They plan their
entire deployment as if it's another
one of those wizard-based click, click,
next, next and finish. There are many
systems integrators there to help, but
a lot of times IT shops don't even
realize that they need help.
The easiest way to recognize chaos
is when your users start complaining
about junk. When search returns junk
as relevant, you know you have problems.
The way to bring it back is to
analyze your provisioning. Ask yourself
whether it's too hard or too easy.
Take a look at your information architecture.
Can people browse and find
information they seek? How about your storage allocation? Are sites too
small or too big? And life cycle management—
is the data part of old files
that should be archived or deleted?
IT managers once empowered with
reports and metrics can react better
to their environments. This data can
help improve the service offering.
If the chaos involves poor custom
coding practices, then starting from
a clean environment and moving over
only what's required, tested and
signed off on can help IT better
manage the solution.
When the...
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IT staff thinks of SharePoint as a service, then they can begin
to decide whether they need things
like quotas, whether they plan to support
self service or if they intend to
charge back for site collections. IT
may decide to host a portal with sites
for each of the business units—not
for content storage or collaboration
but for publishing. Types of deployment
vary so much in both information
architectures and in security
levels and self-service provisioned
objects. Choices will be different in
each situation and based on individual
needs.
To simplify these choices, I've put
together the cheat sheet below.
FIGURE 1 (click to enlarge)
[IMAGE]
Now that you've begun defining a
service offering, and IT is listening to
the business side of the house while
it gathers requirements, there will be
times when two different business
units will not agree on what this
SharePoint service offering needs
to provide.
Ask yourself: Are we saving money
and going with a single server? Or
are we going for high availability with
load-balanced Web front-end servers
and a clustered or mirrored set of SQL
servers? The difference in cost is easily
evident, and the complexity of support
and operations for the staff just
jumped in magnitude. The importance
of the service has become
apparent, and the business now
shares in a significant investment in IT to house corporate assets like no
previous deployment.
When the finance department gets
excited about Excel Services and HR
is looking for integration with a legacy
information store using the Business
Data Catalog, it will be the service
owner or service manager who helps
provide answers based on a governance
plan. A service offering that
has clear policies on customization,
provisioning and development is the
key to a successful deployment.
You'll also need change advisory
boards and a true staged deployment
that includes development and a production
environment with testing and
validation for infrequent changes that
have impact, such as solution deployments
and service packs. These help
the various support teams that are
responsible for the reliability and
availability of a SharePoint deployment.
Choose a framework and fit it to
your company culture. Microsoft
Operations Framework 4.0 supports
both development lifecycle and IT
service management. It's a great
place to start. It doesn't need to dictate
your every move, but it can help
you establish valuable IT assurance.
FIGURE 2 (click to enlarge)
[IMAGE]
Setting up a governance plan that
supports your objectives for a SharePoint service offering will help you
achieve a balance between users and
business units while helping you mold
what SharePoint can do.
Achieving balance through governance
is the goal. Balance means
providing for the growing needs of
the business while bringing about
economies of scale with IT. The bottom
line is to do more with less.
Joel Oleson is an independent consultant involved in training, speaking, technical evangelism and product management for a variety of companies including Nintex. As former senior technical product manager for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Oleson focused on topics related to enterprise deployments of SharePoint, such as performance, scale, backup/restore and high availability. His blog is SharePoint Joel's SharePoint Land.
