Susan Hanley's blog

I often hear the "we need a Wiki" “requirement” from clients.  Since I know that there is no such thing as a "requirement," I always reply back with something along the lines of "what is the business outcome that you are trying to achieve?"  Wikis are merely one of many options for collaboration technology but more than many, they suffer from what I call the "bright shiny object syndrome" (attraction and interest based on the fact that something is new and shiny rather than particularly a

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In several previous posts I’ve written about the “R-word” (requirements) and why it is easy for users to say they are defining requirements but hard for them to articulate requirements in a meaningful way.  As a result, I prefer to focus on “outcomes” or business objectives when I talk to stakeholders about portal and collaboration solutions.  This Stakeholder Interview Guide helps frame that conversation.

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When SharePoint is deployed widely in an organization, end users become contributors instead of just consumers of content.  In this scenario, companies need a “consumable” intranet style guide for people who are more used to writing on paper than on the web. 

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In a previous post, I wrote about an ongoing discussion with my children about the concept of “digital dirt” and how they each need to be careful about what they post in their Facebook accounts, especially the older two who will be out in the workforce soon (I hope!).  This great article in CIO Magazine by Tracy Mayor addresses this issue and describes just how hard it is to un-do your digital past.  My ongoing advice to my kids and

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There is no “one size fits all” model for SharePoint governance; it’s very important to target the governance model for both the type of site (publishing versus collaboration) and the “reach” (enterprise-wide versus team).  However, even for sites where the audience of the site is a small team, a little bit of governance goes a long way.  Balance is the key word for SharePoint team site governance.  Too much governance and teams will find work-arounds.  Too little governance and your users will spend far too much time reinventing the wheel.
 

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After my unsuccessful attempt at the iPhone 3G when it first came out and the ensuing discussion on this blog, I decided to hang on to my BlackBerry Pearl for a little while until the BlackBerry Bold came out.  I’ve now had the Bold for almost two weeks and I’m still deciding whether I’ll keep it at the end of the 30 day trial.  I think I will, but there are some issues ... things that I like and things that I'm just not so sure about.

What I like:

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One problem that it seems all organizations face when they deploy SharePoint is that it’s just not like other software solutions.  Deploying SharePoint is not like rolling out a new Accounts Payable system - there are many deeply embedded business practices, from the use of folders to the use of e-mail, that are disrupted when on organization decides to commit to SharePoint in a big way.  But the reality is that companies often completely underestimate what it takes to deploy SharePoint as a collaboration tool.
 

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Take a look at this really cool video from Ian Morrish’s blog.  He’s one of many bloggers at PDC2008.  Ian’s got video showing a demo of searching his WSSDemo.com SharePoint site from the file explorer and from within Office applications.  Well worth reviewing to get a glimpse at what’s to come from Windows 7.

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Here's a really cool web site that my friend Ken Heft sent me a link to: http://wordle.net/create. Basically, you point it to a URL or copy in a bunch of text and it spits back a really cool looking tag cloud of the words that appear most frequently. Don't try it with Firefox, however, because when I did, it just hung. Worked like a champ with IE, however.

Just for fun, I tried it with my blog - I took the entire content of everything I've written in the past 18 months and got some interesting results. Clearly, I mention the word SharePoint a lot. I guess that's a good thing since that's how I make a living. But, apparently, I'm pretty fond of the word "really" too. I guess I need to listen for that word in my speech as well, because I tend to write exactly the way I talk. My friend Rona has what I have to call her "catch phrase." I don't think she can go more than 5 minutes without saying , "Simply because ..." Don't ask me where that comes from. But, really, do I say/write really that often? Maybe I really, really do. Really.

Try it on something you've written - or if you've got a blog, have it suck in your blog. Really, the results could be pretty interesting. Really.

I may be a bit of an overachiever when it comes to preparing for the holidays, but I like to get all my holiday gift shopping done before Thanksgiving so that I don’t have to deal with the nonsense at the malls during the holiday season.  So, just in case you do too, here’s my first recommendation.  While it may not be politically correct to recommend a product that is pretty expensive, if you are looking for a special gift for the readers on your holiday list this year (or maybe for yourself), you couldn’t do any better than the Amazon Kindle.

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It was a dark and stormy night, … well, not really, but in the spirit (pun totally intended) of the upcoming Halloween holiday, I thought I would share a really perplexing SharePoint mystery and my somewhat unsatisfying solution.
 

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Sometimes, it just works that someone else writes something you wish you could … This week, I’d like to share a really thought provoking blog post from Andrew Gent.  (Thanks to Stan Garfield for sharing the link.)  In his blog posting on September 30, 2008 called “The Alternatives to Collaboration,” Andrew starts with a description of three behaviors people use to work with others: collaborating, conspiring, and competing.  He talks about what type of people (in general) trend towards each approach and how to engage people who seem to prefer one particular method.  It’s a thoroughly thought provoking analysis and I’m sure you will find a useful take-away.  Read the full post at: Andrew Gent's Blog.

I am writing this on the plane returning from KM World 2008.  I was at the very first KM World conference, which I’m pretty sure was in October 1998, back when you could go to a conference on Knowledge Management pretty much every month of the year if you wanted to, so it was pretty cool to see how strong this event has remained for the past 10 years.  I enjoyed re-connecting with colleagues I’ve known for a very long time.  One of the most interesting features of this year’s conference on Knowledge Management was the focus and interest in SharePoint.

There were enough presentations specifically on SharePoint that it was featured in the conference program.  In addition, on Friday, there was all-day SharePoint seminar, another indication of the incredible interest in this product.  I was given one of the worst possible time slots in which to deliver my talk, “Secrets of Successful Portal (SharePoint) Implementations” (which is posted on my web site, along with supplemental notes and examples), at the very end of a very long first day, just before the free beer.  One thing I’ve learned about conferences is that you don’t want to be the only thing keeping people from the beer!  Moreover, I flew to San Jose from Washington on a 6 am flight and by the time I gave my talk, it was actually 7:15 pm on my body clock and I was pretty exhausted.  I was shocked when close to 100 people showed up and when I challenged the group to ask me a lot of questions so that I’d stay awake and they would stay engaged, they exceeded my expectations and we had a lively dialogue, which was much more fun for me than “death by PowerPoint” (not that I would ever do that, of course).

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This week, I read a really great white paper from Microsoft called “How to Get the Most Value from Social Computing for Business with Microsoft.”  The author provides a nice overview of social computing and then describes how existing features of SharePoint support each of the various elements.  It may not be the definitive answer to the “I want Facebook for the enterprise” question, but it does a good job providing insights into how to leverage existing technology to achieve the outcomes that executives really want when they ask for “Facebook for just us.”

Neither is acceptable if you ask me!  This week, I had an opportunity to attend an AIIM seminar in Washington, D.C. with the intriguing title, “Is SharePoint Enough? Automating Document Centric Processes.”  From the detailed description, my expectation was that I would learn about image capture hardware and software technologies that complement SharePoint.  This is relevant for one of my current engagements so it seemed like a worthwhile investment of my time.  For the most part, I saw really cool hardware and listened to interesting case study presentations.  The one exception was one where the “performance” by the presenter/vendor reminded me of some of the outrageous and fairly nasty attacks one might see in a political campaign.

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This week, I’ve been doing something I don’t normally do – building the SharePoint sites that I typically design.  As I was configuring web parts, I noticed something that I’d never thought about before – when a user hovers over the title of a web part, the default “help” message that is displayed can be very confusing and should be something that you think about as part of your site design .   For lists and libraries, the help message for the web part is picked up from the Description entered for the list.  If you enter a meaningful description when you create the list or library, it will automatically be displayed in the hover message in the web part.  If you want a different “hover” message, you can edit the Description in the web part (found in the Description fi

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Two weeks ago, exactly two days before my birthday, I checked in to the Omni Severin hotel in Indianapolis, one of two hotels I frequently use during my weekly business trips to Indy.  Recently, I’d been staying at the Embassy Suites to beef up my Hilton Honors status but since it was sold out, I was back at my other regular hotel.  When I picked up my key, I noticed that the room was on the Penthouse level, but I’ve stayed up there before and the rooms were exactly the same as other floors so I didn’t think much about it.  That is, until I got off the elevator and saw that my room had a name – the City View Suite.

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Following up on the advice of someone who replied to my iPhone 3G post, I added the iPod touch to my birthday wish list – all of the fun of the iPhone 3G without the risk of actually depending on the device to do anything critical – like provide mobile access to my e-mail, calendar, and contacts no matter where I am.  On Friday of last week, I got my wish and spent the weekend playing with the new iPod Touch – the fun apps from the iPhone but no expectations about successfully managing my calendar or contacts, which are still happily synchronizing with my BlackBerry Pearl.  That is, until I applied the latest upgrades to iTunes and the iPhone/iPod touch software.

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I have to admit, I am sort of intrigued by this concept (but not necessarily in a good way) but I wonder if this is just another way to avoid people connections for the generation growing up on Facebook, Xbox Live, and text messages.  On August 2, Matt Richtel in the New York Times wrote about Slydial, a service that allows you to essentially go directly to voice mail when you make a phone call.  It’s almost like sending an e-mail over the phone – no human interaction and the person can retrieve it whenever they want.

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Last summer, I wrote a blog post about e-mail overload and I shared some ideas I’d collected about how to stop swimming in e-mail.  Recently, Jonathan Spira, CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex, wrote a great article about this topic in his weekly Basex:TechWatch newsletter.  I asked Jonathan if his regular articles were posted as blog entries that I could link to but at least for now, they are not.  However, Jonathan has given me permission to reprint his excellent commentary below.  The Basex: TechWatch is a great summary of what is going on in the collaboration, portal, knowledge and content management space and Jonathan’s introductory commentary is always thought provoking.  I encourage interested readers to subscribe to Basex:Tec

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