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The SharePoint Assembly Line

By Christian Buckley posted 12-21-2011 14:03

  

Everyone knows the story of Henry Ford, the Model T automobile, and the advances made to productivity and mass production by utilizing a revolutionary process called the assembly line, where instead of having workers move from vehicle to vehicle to perform repetitive tasks (which was slow, and introduced unnecessary risks and mistakes), the vehicles were moved down a line of worker stations. This allowed individual specialists to quickly add their part of perform their role, and then repeat the process on the next vehicle in the line as it moved down the factory floor, resulting in a finished product at the far end.

While Ford is credited with making the assembly line a competitive success (and  a primary discussion topic for business school programs around the world), the assembly line would not have been successful without a similarly successful standardization -- the screw. Back in the day, screws varies widely, with each machinist using their own style or size. One pair of machinists, brothers Job and William Wyatt, wanted to mass produce screws, creating lathe devices that allowed them to eventually generate  16,000 screws per day, and thereby greatly reduced the cost and time involved with any mass production activity…..including later advances in automobiles.

SharePoint as a platform, and with its broad partner ecosystem, is quickly becoming the enterprise application assembly line. You'll often hear MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals) and MCMs (Microsoft Certified Masters) openly discuss the limits of even their knowledge or expertise of the platform, given its massive scope and breadth. But what the platform provides is an opportunity for specialization. Many Strategic Integrators (SI's or consulting companies) have established themselves in the space by quickly building out assembly line-type practices revolving around specific solutions, whether it be Business Intelligence, external websites, or team collaboration, or other targeted areas.

SharePoint is to the company website, portal, or extranet what Ford's assembly line was to auto manufacturing. Strong components, easily assembled into the end solution you needs.  



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