Is SharePoint Scalable?

Mauro Cardarelli asks the right question, i.e. whether organizations are ready for collaboration software. He puts it like this:

I ask “Is SharePoint scalable [in this organization]?” That is, can this company set the proper governance policies and business process changes to maximize its SharePoint investment to take advantage

Well, on the one hand this is true, but do we always need to fiddle with business processes? Software should be freeform and adaptable to a variety of organizational settings, and social software in the enterprise starts with this premise. In fact I would argue that one huge advantage of e.g. wikis in the workplace is that they can adapt to a multitude of settings …

But his requirements (and best practices) for implementation projects are good:

It starts with building the right advisory team and setting the proper procedures (in writing) that define the guidelines for all users to maximize their experience as consumers AND contributors of corporate content. With that, SharePoint scales… throughout the organization… into your partner/client community… and out into the internet world.

No arguing with this, especially the right staffing of an advisory team (and perhaps also employing external specialist consultants like me, hint hint …) is important.

Does Best Practice exist?

Here comes the question that lies behind many discussions I’ve had in the last days (e.g. here) …

I have started to think about what is best practice in a complex system – can it exist? In complex systems every situation is unique. Whilst practitioners closest to the problem will find a way of solving it, does that mean that the solution to this problem can be adequately codified and be laid over a totally different situation and applied in another context? Chances are that in a small team setting you might get away with this and build models to assist in finding the best solution. But as the number of people involved, and the problems to be solved increase, you will quickly move into new territory with a different frame of reference and set of contexts – so would one “best practice” work?

Hardly, yet best practices are important, which can be used when situations, tasks and (underlying) patterns are similar. Of course best practices shouldn’t be carved in stone but be open to adaptation and tweaking – it’s a start when we don’t understand them as “products” but as processes.

In regard of Enterprise 2.0 for complex organizational systems this makes it clear, that one advantage of light-weight and freeform enterprise social software systems is that they can be constantly improved and refined, whereas (customized) packaged software can’t be tweaked and optimized this way. This follows open-source concepts such as “release early and often” or “fail fast” and puts them to use in enterprise software projects.

This calls for a small start, that is expanded constantly with new services, from which one can quickly learn from user feedback …

Lessons Learned from Social Software Implementations

Mike Stopforth collects some neat advice for social software implementation projects, but basically it is aimed at fellow social software consultants. His arguments are well put forth, nothing to argue here. I understand his critique of overly-IT-focussed consultant selling well – fortunately my boutique consultancy frogpond is in no way a IT consultancy, thus I feel no guilt.

1. Social Software is not for Everyone

Despite what us Web 2.0 enthusiasts may want to believe, not every society, community and individual can find value in 2.0-ness. Some companies do fine without it and forcing a social media inplementation on a community can only get ugly. Be as objective as you can when you draw up a strategic plan or functional specification for a project. If you’re not convinced that social software can add value, walk away from it.

2. Social Software is About People

And therefore is about culture. Certain corporate cultures find it easy to integrate social software, others kick up against it. This often has to do with change management, but sometimes i’ts impossible to force (or even encourage) change. Competitive internal environments where intellectual property is regarded a personal competitive differentiator can often be difficult to penetrate in this regard. It also depends heavily on the size of the community, […]

IBM’s Suarez: Wikis at work (part two)

There’s the second part of the interview with Luis Suarez (go visit his blog for more, it’s worthwhile) ready at IBM’s ShortCuts, touching some key success factors for wiki adoption in the enterprise.

How do you motivate co-workers to use wikis in the workplace? […] tips on encouraging wiki-based collaboration in the enterprise.

From his blog:

1. A Critical Mass of Early Adopters who can pave out the road for those non tech savvy knowledge workers so that they can focus on sharing what the know as opposed to struggle with the tool itself.
2. Fully supported infrastructure in place so that collaboration takes place with a sense of belonging, or ownership, from the perspective that knowledge workers’ contributions remain there for as long as possible and therefore they can refer to them back and forth and continue to build further up on it. That sense of ownership.
3. Online tutorials or screencasts on how to perform essential tasks: like adding a page, managing an access control list, subscribing to RSS feeds, etc. etc. so that they would have a chance to find solutions to easy tasks quickly and move on forward just focusing on what really matters: sharing their knowledge and collaborating with others.

Jeder Leser auch ein Autor: Blogs und Wikis

Die Swisscom stellt mehrere (gut gemachte) Broschüren zum Medieneinsatz zur Verfügung. Der Schoolguide Nr. 9 der hat den Titel “Jeder Leser auch ein Autor: Blogs und Wikis” und kann hier als pdf heruntergeladen werden.

Die Hauptrolle im Internet spielen heute die Nutzer. Sie tauschen Ideen und Wissen online aus und schaffen ihre eigenen Inhalte, z.B. in Blogs und Wikis.

Anders als die Schulungs- und Coachingunterlagen die frogpond entwickelt, sind die Schoolguides natürlich auf Schüler, Lehrer und Eltern zugeschnitten. Sie sind aber eine beispielhafte Umsetzung einer “Einführung für Anfänger” in den Themenkomplex Blogs und Wikis.