Blogs

I do a lot of SharePoint consulting, so I’m often asked what it takes to become a SharePoint expert. I believe answering that question goes along with the question, What is SharePoint?

To me, SharePoint is a very sophisticated tool for automated generation of web sites. When you create a new team site, for example, SharePoint reads an XML configuration file and automatically builds an ASP.NET web site with a master page and the web pages described by the XML. You can think of the XML configuration file as a kind of script. A SharePoint expert should know how to write these XML configuration scripts, which must conform to a schema defined by the SharePoint platform. As the client, you could then call this script from the browser and automatically create new sites based on this script.

SharePoint includes a lot of additional tools, such as SharePoint Designer and Performance Point Designer that experts use for building solutions in SharePoint. Microsoft likes to say these tools create “no code solutions”. In reality, these are code generation tools. SharePoint experts know how to start with the code generated by these tools and then customize that code to get the desired outcomes. Sometimes a SharePoint expert may decide it’s better to create a new component from scratch using Visual Studio to access SharePoint’s underlying infrastructure.

Lots of information and experience goes into making these decisions. As a SharePoint expert, I evaluate a client’s desired outcomes and then determine the appropriate mix of browser configuration, code generation tools, and custom components that are required to bring that solution to life in SharePoint. Sometimes I decide that SharePoint isn’t the right fit for a client’s outcome. That’s another part of being an expert: knowing when to say no.

SharePoint experts ideally should also have overlapping skills in the knowledge domains that are relevant to a client’s desired outcomes. For example, I’ve been creating web sites with custom content management solutions for a long time. So I have a lot of knowledge about what it takes to build a web site in addition to my knowledge about SharePoint. (I started using SharePoint because I saw it’s potential to save me a lot of manual work.) Like a lot of web professionals, I have to know about how to incorporate search and social media into my solutions. These are skills I must have whether SharePoint is in the picture or not.

I don’t have very much knowledge in the business intelligence (BI) domain. Just because I’m a SharePoint expert doesn’t mean that I’m qualified to deliver a BI-centric solution in SharePoint. I could work with a BI consultant to figure out what it takes to deliver their solution using SharePoint, but adding Performance Point to SharePoint doesn’t magically make me a BI consultant.

There are a few key takeaways here:

• Make sure your SharePoint expert isn’t a one-trick pony. If they only know how to build solutions using Visual Studio, then that’s what you’re going to get.
• Make sure your SharePoint expert has some knowledge in relevant subject domains. Be prepared to augment that person’s knowledge. Many SharePoint experts such as me come from other knowledge domains. So you can usually find someone who has experience in SharePoint and whatever else you need.
• Finally, if you’re having trouble finding a SharePoint expert, then grow your own. SharePoint is pretty well documented by now. And all it really takes to become a SharePoint expert is having your brain switched on.