·        If you don’t have a passion for SharePoint, rather find another project to work on and let someone else take over for you.  It takes a lot of passion and a lot of work to make this a success – and your business users notice everything.

·        Make sure you have enough space for backups if you are running a POC server – the log files get full fast and the backups fail. 

·        Don’t do the backups to the same machine; if the RAID controller fails you will have a problem.

·        Make sure you have software that can restore to sub-sites and document libraries level on your POC servers.  Those servers tend to run for much longer than you anticipated; proper management of them is crucial.

·        Do not under-estimate the impact of lack of knowledge by your role-players of how SharePoint works, what it is capable of, and how it should be set up.

·        Do not under-estimate the impact of turf wars – this has been the biggest stumbling block to the rollout of the platform as far as I’m concerned.  Each team has its own agenda and it is extremely difficult to get consensus on anything.

·        Do not under-estimate the availability of the role-players – diaries tend to be a nightmare, book Steerco meetings long in advance and preferably for a year in advance.

·        You need a Steering Committee that is 100% committed to the platform in order for it to succeed.  It is crucial to have a strong Sponsor who believes in the project fully and who can make the hard decisions. 

·        Not all business users are created equal.  You need to be very flexible, adaptable to change and able to think on your feet to survive in this space; and most of all, you better know what SharePoint can do out of the box.

·        Don’t show business users what they can’t have, you’ll just annoy them.  If you don’t have Office 2007 and Enterprise Feature licenses for every user, then don’t show them that functionality yet.  Show them what they can use right now with Office 2003 and Core Services. 

·        When you do demos to your users, try and do so with docs they have been working with so they have something to relate to.  They 'click' much quicker and the buy-in is faster.  In our case, the very best way to get buy-in, is to convert Spreadsheet the Great to lists and show them how to get MI out of it.  It's a sure winner!  Once you build a solution for a department that's working well, use it as an example in your demos.  The word travels fast! 

·        The resistance to change to the technology is not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.  Being such a user friendly product, they business users are catching on incredibly fast and we can barely keep up with the requirements.

·        Rally the support of your users, create some excitement amongst them and let them do the championing for you.  There are plenty of users out there who have a flair for the software, nurture and train them.  Pockets of these ‘super users’ are invaluable!!

·        Start identifying and training a maintenance / support team soon as you have chosen the platform, especially in a large organisation.  There are very few SharePoint skills out there right now, it’s important to up-skill enough people to support the platform.  Users push the boundaries of the Core Services within months, you need to be ready to support them on Enterprise Features. 

·        Never lie to your business users about your availability to build solutions for them and don’t even think of telling them they don’t know what they want because you know what they want.  Just be honest up front and listen, listen, listen.  Don’t interrupt them, let them explain their environment properly. Listen, listen, listen.

·        Communicate!!  Keep your users informed of what’s going on.  Make sure any downtown is communicated timeously.  Keep sending them updates to the project, latest tips and tricks, changes in policy, etc.  Don’t treat them like mushrooms, it will come back to bite you.

·        Keep a record of all instructions or decisions given to a business unit.  You never know when you’re going to need proof of what you told them.

·        The standard of training available in the market is low.  It is difficult to find worthwhile training and the courses are expensive.  Identify someone to do inhouse training on the Core Services at least.  Shop around for vendors to supply Enterprise Feature training and get referrals first.

·        Most requirements that come through can be solved without custom development, hence the requirement for a strong maintenance / support team.  In the banking environment, 90% of the requirements are converting spreadsheets to custom lists.  Learn about lookups and calculated fields first.

·        Before you roll the platform out to business, make sure you have a Rules / Guidelines document drawn up and distributed.  It becomes a free for all over night.  Make sure it covers editing tools, SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio.  Make sure the users know what they can and cannot do on the platform.

·        Don’t under-estimate the amount of red tape involved in large companies to get anything done or purchased.  It can have a severe impact on your timelines.

·        Lock down the Production environment and have server administrators you can trust who understand the impact of implementing changes very well.  I can’t tell you how often one setting has been changed which ‘breaks’ 3 others.  It is crucial that the server administrator understands the product end to end.

·        Not all monitoring tools are created equal – make sure you research them properly and decide what you want to see before buying a product.  What we end up monitoring most of the time is site quotas and permissions, various reports around this are required on a daily basis.

·        When upgrading your users from Office 2003 to Office 2007 specifically for your SharePoint project : make sure their PC’s are spec’d properly to handle it, that there is budget to upgrade them if not, don’t under-estimate the training it may to take to get them up to speed on 2007, take bandwidth into consideration when doing country-wide installations.

Coming next : Tips and tricks for the end user.  I am manning an Innovation Centre exhibition stand on SharePoint at our company next week, so we are expecting much more excitement around the project after that.