Jim Sinur

I wrote on SharePoint last November and indicated that it would be a great place to start process work and threw in some counter points for thought.

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2008/11/11/microsofts-sharepoint-is-a-virus-infecting-bpm/

It is really clear that process work is flourishing because of SharePoint. Almost all of the organizations I talk to have activity going on in SharePoint. I am getting folks that want to increase the ante and get more serious about doing more pervasive processes with SharePoint. There are issues out there about bridging to supporting technologies that have to be thought about before completing your process journey.

Will the SharePoint Processes be Upward Compatible?

There is concern about Window Workflow Foundation (WWF) being backwards compatible with earlier versions ergo causing a conversion issue. Most organizations are stuck in a position of needing to extend their process work, but being fearful of conversions. Some organizations are working with vendors that surround SharePoint processes and will take some of the conversion risks out of the equation. This puts the burden of leveraging the executable SharePoint processes and their versioning on another BPM capabilities shoulders.

Will the SharePoint Content be Managed Well?

Organizations quite often worry about records retention issues for legal reasons and treat content as gold with proper back ups I am seeing a trend for using SharePoint as a collaboration hub backed up by a deeper content management system. True versioning between SharePoint and these ECM systems seems elusive though.

SharePoint is being used aggressively for opportunistic processes and content. This seems like a great way to make progress in an inexpensive manner. Once one gets more systematic, it seems that surrounding SharePoint is a strategy that is spreading as fast as SharePoint use is spreading.