Business Goals and Requirements

                 

 
Special Edition Using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server
By Robert  Ferguson

Table of Contents
Chapter  20.   Example Scenario 1 ”Planning a Deployment


Understanding what each business unit needs in terms of a document and content management solution is critical to a successful implementation. Goals and needs should drive everything from budget to implementation timelines , high-availability requirements, service level agreements, post go-live support, and more. Questions like the following must be posed:

  • How do we manage content today (server-based file/print, Exchange public folders, miscellaneous internal and external Web sites, and so on)?

  • Where do we maintain that data (server file shares, local client hard drives , databases, intranet Web servers, and so forth)?

  • What kind of data do we keep (Word docs, Exchange folders, Excel Spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, Lotus Notes, MS Access databases, flat files, data residing in SQL 2000 databases, and so on)?

  • Who actually uses the data, and what are the retention period requirements (different business units may need the same data but have different format requirements, need it for a longer period of time than other groups, or need it exported into another application for further analysis)?

Once a general understanding of the preceding is achieved, a more detailed understanding is typically required to determine what the end users of the proposed SharePoint Portal Server solution actually require to perform their jobs effectively. Even then, a further determination as to how they will access and use the content within the Portal is required. One popular method of gathering this data is through the use of simple end-user “based questionnaires designed to uncover the following user characteristics and behaviors:

  • What is your job/task role?

  • What do you use the current system of content and document management for?

  • What kind of data would you like to see that is not a part of the current solution?

  • When do you need access to the content management system?

    • Standard 9 a.m. “5 p.m.

    • "After hours"

    • Occasional weekends to support month-end close

    • Other requirements driven by the business

  • How do you actually find/access the data?

    • By performing keyword searches

    • Navigating through various shares and folders

    • Browsing through data organized into categories

In the case of ABC Company, they were like many other mid-market companies that did not have a dedicated content or document management solution in place. Rather, the financial group relied on a number of file shares named after functional roles (such as "logistics", "AR", "AP", "Benefits", "HR", and nearly 20 more), spread out across multiple file/print Microsoft NT and Windows 2000 servers. The bulk of the data consisted of Microsoft Word and Excel documents, though there had been a need for access to high-level month-end and quarter-end roll-up PowerPoint slideshows presented to upper management. Additionally, data was often maintained in private Exchange 2000 mailboxes and only shared as requested by colleagues. Other data was sitting out on a Web server just deployed in the previous year, but a recent security breach compromising employee payroll records had made many of the financial folks uneasy. And more recently, an in-house custom application “based attempt to roll up all of this enterprise-wide data had failed during the pilot phase ”the pilot users found the interface cumbersome to use, and access to the data was slow due to poor search capabilities.

Finally, the general availability of a few of ABC's servers had been extremely poor, the result of what seemed to be less-than -stringent change control processes more than faulty hardware or OS stability issues. For example, the company suffered two days of unplanned downtime on six different servers when the NT/W2K Administrator decided it was time to update to the latest system management agents , and corrupted the local registry on each machine with a botched upgrade.

NOTE

Change control refers to the practice of first testing a suggested or potential change to a production system in a technical sandbox or other SPS environment.


While the end-user population (primarily financial analysts and controllers) was happy with 7 a.m. “7 p.m. access at this point in time, it should be noted that weekend access was required the week before and the week after each month-end close. And with Asian and European financial groups soon to come online in the next six months, mandatory real-time 24x7 access to all portal resources would become a reality shortly.

With this end-user “driven data, and the higher-level business group data requirements outlined previously, an organization structure could now be put into place to begin the implementation/deployment planning process.


                 
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Special Edition Using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server
Special Edition Using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server
ISBN: 0789725703
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 286

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