Craig RothOn Tuesday Microsoft launched a SharePoint adoption website for SharePoint 2010. It takes a similar approach to the SharePoint Buzz Kit they published for 2007, helping internal SharePoint evangelists (often the owners of SharePoint) to set off light bulbs in the heads of potential business users (and turn them into fans). Seeing as I wrote “Outside In Strategy for SharePoint (or Rethinking the Need to “Drive Adoption”), I was dubious of what I would find.
It contains a set of documents to use in preparing your internal evangelism campaign for SharePoint, and a set of slick videos. Here’s a sampler:
- “Sticky Situation” is about using SharePoint to assign and track tasks for a team
- “Cup of Chaos” demonstrates why remote storage is a good idea.
- “Team player” is about an administrative assistant keeping track of schedules and tasks.
- “The Elusive Chris Smith” showcases people search.
- “Begging for approval” is about simple doc approval workflows and tracking.
Maybe these examples aren’t targeted at large enterprises, or those deciding whether to use SharePoint versus another product. If so, they should clarify the audience. Because what they are showing reflects common dysfunctional SharePoint approaches that I see in my clients every day:
Everything is a SharePoint Nail: The videos are clearly made for organizations that already have SharePoint since they don’t describe why SharePoint is better than myriad other products and technologies at addressing these needs. Any doc management system has simple approval workflows, there are dozens of ways of providing a searchable profiles, remote storage can be accomplished with shared drives as well, etc. The answer is that as long as SharePoint is in front of you, you may as well use it to solve your problems. A mature, enterprise approach involves gap analysis, tool rationalization and governance, and packaging of services (sometimes combinations of products) to meet needs. But that doesn’t make for a cute video.
Avoiding involvement in crafting solutions: The SharePoint evangelist specializes in pointing at feature lists and then walking away. In “Sticky Situation” his final involvement in the video is to say the guy should use SharePoint, say “how’s that for a package?”, stick a SharePoint post-it on the guy’s head, and then smirks as he walks away. Then in the next scene, the disorganized guy is dumping his old stickies since he’s figured out how to use SharePoint instead. The SharePoint guy is not shown taking ownership of a problem, helping to craft a solution, or talking to other teams to see if a generalized and reusable solution could have a mass, systematic impact rather than just being cheerful about changing one life at a time. You should work with business partners; don’t work on business partners. And don’t stick things on their foreheads.
Going for easy, quick, and minor wins with SharePoint: The videos are about individual productivity, spurred serendipitously by a SharePoint evangelist that happens to walk into the target’s office and notices an opportunity. Improving productivity one person at a time is great for that person, but without a systematic approach it is unlikely to be more than a drop in the bucket compared to the potential value a collaboration tool could have for a large organization. And by systemic I don’t mean mass communication – I mean demand management. I thought Microsoft had abandoned the “team collaboration” moniker for SharePoint in 2007 to embrace an enterprise-wide approach, but looking at this website it feels like 2006 all over again.
There are a few bright spots to the site. I really like the fun approach. The videos are genuinely funny and cute. And check out the recipes in the Quick Reference Cards. The Thai Steak Salad looks especially yummy. However, again, there are many ways to make Thai Steak Salad without SharePoint.
If you get past all the videos, table tents, and posters the last document you’ll find is the Best Practices document. This doc finally introduces the idea of a partnership with the business rather than doing a show-and-tell then walking away. As it states “the importance of including end users in the design of the solution. Understanding their information sharing challenges and key business “pain points” are critical to solution success." Someone should tell that to the smarmy SharePoint evangelist in the videos.
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