{"id":423,"date":"2016-06-05T07:55:45","date_gmt":"2016-06-05T11:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/?p=423"},"modified":"2017-05-24T09:28:03","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T13:28:03","slug":"when-implementing-sharepoint-failing-to-plan-is-planning-to-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/?p=423","title":{"rendered":"When Implementing SharePoint: Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/plan-to-fail1-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px;\" title=\"plan-to-fail1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/plan-to-fail1_thumb-1.jpg\" alt=\"plan-to-fail1\" width=\"240\" height=\"131\" align=\"left\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Benjamin Franklin is reported to have said, &#8220;If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve seen this scenario \u2013 the failure to plan \u2013 play out at many companies, especially when implementing or upgrading SharePoint environments.<\/p>\n<p>Implementing or upgrading a product like SharePoint, that is designed to empower information workers to do things for themselves, requires detailed planning.<\/p>\n<p>Why?<\/p>\n<p>Empowerment does not come from a &#8220;one size fits all&#8221; product or solution.<\/p>\n<p>SharePoint can be used to tailor a product or solution and deliver the greatest business value to an organizations&#8217; technical environment. And that kind of tailoring requires careful planning. Otherwise, an organization will end up with a product that is implemented well, but does not fulfill the strategic goals they&#8217;ve set for the business.<\/p>\n<p>There are many reasons why an organization may not spend enough time planning before implementing SharePoint. Some of the most common are as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;We don&#8217;t know enough about the capabilities of SharePoint. We need to do a pilot to find out what&#8217;s possible.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;People are excited now about the new environment. If we spend a lot of time planning that enthusiasm will subside.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Planning is important, but we don&#8217;t want to succumb to Analysis-Paralysis. We&#8217;re afraid that planning will just go on forever and we&#8217;ll never implement anything.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;We hired a consulting firm to do our implementation.\u00a0 They are experts, have done this before and already know how it should be done.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;We&#8217;re just doing an upgrade.\u00a0 We did our planning when we originally implemented SharePoint.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All of these statements have a kernel of truth in them. However, all of the above overstate the case and can lead to significant problems. Here are the issues raised by each statement:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Often, pilot environments become indispensable production environments when no one is looking. Once an environment is in production it&#8217;s difficult to go back to the beginning and plan, even if you learned important lessons.<\/li>\n<li>Planning tasks that don&#8217;t involve a broad cross-section of the user population can lead to a decrease in user acceptance, and users look for alternatives to fulfill their business needs. But a poorly planned environment will also lead to a lack of user adoption and a failed implementation.<\/li>\n<li>Planning is not important to success, it&#8217;s critical to success. But if planning seems to go on forever it is poor planning. Planning should be a well-managed and scheduled part of an implementation project. It should have goals and deadlines.<\/li>\n<li>Seeking professional help can be an asset and save time. But every implementation is different and planning for those differences is a critical success factor.<\/li>\n<li>Upgrades always involve change and new feature sets. Otherwise why would you upgrade? Planning is not just a task done up front. It&#8217;s a task that needs to be incorporated into the life-cycle of SharePoint.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now that your organization is convinced that planning is a critical to success and to strategically implementing SharePoint, you need to know what tasks to plan.<\/p>\n<p>In part two of this blog series, we&#8217;ll discuss common planning tasks that are overlooked when companies fail to plan their new SharePoint implementation.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/?p=448\">Read Part 2<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Benjamin Franklin is reported to have said, &#8220;If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!&#8221; I&#8217;ve seen this scenario \u2013 the failure to plan \u2013 play out at many companies, especially when implementing or upgrading SharePoint environments. Implementing or upgrading a product like SharePoint, that is designed to empower information workers to do &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/?p=423\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">When Implementing SharePoint: Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,88],"tags":[91,90,60,54,89,23],"class_list":["post-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sharepoint","category-strategy","tag-bluechip","tag-sharepoint","tag-sharepoint_2013","tag-sharepoint_online","tag-strategy","tag-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions\/475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}