SharePoint is Viral in Nature, just implement it and it’ll spread! (like Syphilis)

(Part 2 in my series of “I hate SharePoint, and why every business should use it”)

Oh no you didn’t! You didn’t just compare my business application to a common STD often called “the great imitator” because it’s many features and functions are often indistinguishable from other products!    I have to say, this is by far the PERFECT anecdote! (I’ve referenced SharePoint in this way in the past in my talks.. but never before did I have this VERBATIM and slightly modified caption from the CDC Website on STD Facts)  So, let’s take a journey, slightly modifying and replacing a few words in this description of What is the Treatment

SharePoint is easy to cure in its early stages. A single injection of planning and training will cure a business who has had SharePoint for less than a year. Additional doses are needed to treat someone who has had SharePoint for longer than a year. For people who are allergic to planning, other forms of project management are available to treat SharePoint. There are no home remedies or over-the-counter solutions that will cure SharePoint. Treatment will kill the SharePoint sprawl and prevent further damage, but it will not repair damage already done.

Because effective treatment is available, it is important that persons be screened for SharePoint on an on-going basis if their legacy behaviors put them at risk for STD’s (SharePoint Team Deployments)

Persons who receive SharePoint treatment must abstain from sprawl with new partners until the SharePoint sores are completely healed. Persons with SharePoint must notify their partners so that they also can be tested and receive treatment if necessary.

As you can tell if you read the original sourced location, NOT A WHOLE LOT CHANGED! But this says SO MUCH for this STD and the SharePoint community as a whole!

If you’ve ever suffered through sprawl, be it SharePoint, Exchange, Notes, or Wiki-sprawl you know exactly what I’m talking about.    I cannot emphasize enough how beneficial planning is, but this is not for naught!   Just because you built a legacy infrastructure whereby your sprawl has left you almost crippled does not mean you have no recourse or option to turn this around.    These lessons learned and best practices from Microsoft’s own Internal IT on what they did to get from where they ‘were’ to where they are today on 2010 is an eye-opener and a must check out!

Some of the best lessons I took away from these sessions (and more which I’m not referring to here) is I get it that you have a war-torn SharePoint environment which was created potentially years ago with bad patterns, practices and little strategy, direction or vision.   Guess what?  I don’t care!  I don’t care about yester-year, I care about the future; and the strategy for the future is… Build for tomorrow, and migrate yesterday; Don’t try to migrate yesterday in ORDER to build for tomorrow.   Is it possible? Yes.  Is it enjoyable? NO!   SharePoint easily migrates and data can shift and move far easier than other platforms.   You DO HAVE OPTIONS! Take advantage of them, but don’t try and cripple yourself attempting to fix your SharePoint 2003 environment so you can TRY to migrate to 2010.    Deploy 2010, get it the way you want, establish governance, proper practices, avoid the sprawl and migrate IN to it; don’t try to do this backwards – You don’t have to!

Oh, and get regular check-ups, you never know what your Partner has been getting in to. :)

Resources in this article from:

• Microsoft IT: How MSIT Upgraded Microsoft to SharePoint 2010

• Information Governance for Microsoft SharePoint 2010