As a consultant, I get to see SharePoint used in lots of different ways. Some good, others just cause. Regardless of the scenario, one of my favorite refrains for both clients and fellow consultants is, ‘That’s not a SharePoint problem.’
I often hear SharePoint blamed for a multitude of problems that are much bigger than any one product. The reality is that the world of work is changing and employers are asking employees to take on more responsibilities. As a manager or worker you may have unwittingly asked for these changes: You want more control from IT. You’re tired of waiting for IT’s blessing on your projects. You want to choose your own vendors. I’ve listed below three common examples where IT is trying to give you what you (or your boss) wants.
Granting other people access to your documents. When I first started in IT, it was still called Data Processing. The idea then that end users would manage their own permissions was laughable. Now, you’re expected to think about roles and rights and match those up to the places where you store documents, which happens to be in a product known as SharePoint.
Dreaming up a set of hyperlinked documents that allow other employees to use your business processes. The trend now is to think about your business processes as service offerings. Then you have to build a web site in the company portal, which happens to be in a product known as SharePoint, to market those services. You’re also expected to know something about making web sites “usable”.
Telling the company how long you think they should retain a document. In today’s work environment, you’re expected to think about a document’s life cycle every time you touch it. Your records manager expects you to apply a retention policy to your document. All too often, the retention policy is implemented as a series of arcane codes that bear little meaning to anyone outside of records management. And where do you get the privilege of picking the right retention code when all you really want to do is save your document and get on with your day? You guessed it: a product known as SharePoint.
Even if you didn’t willingly sign up for these changes, work and the economy are structurally changing. I’ll have lots more to say about this topic and many others as it relates to SharePoint over the next few months.
The next time you’re tempted to throw SharePoint under the bus for something that is essentially organizational change, ask yourself: Is this a SharePoint problem?
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