The Tail Wagging the Dog
A question was posted on LinkedIn about how the industry is dealing with the lack of SharePoint talent when companies are deploying. In my opinion, they aren't. In order to better understand this point of view, I am going to give you a scenario.
An energetic and technology driven systems administrator wants to stand up and play with SharePoint in his company of 200 people in order to get his hands on it and see what it can do. He stands it up and shows how document management and shared calendaring works to his boss and co-workers. The out-of-the-box functionality of SharePoint creates enough interest that the company adopts it and starts rolling it out to the entire company.
The proud technician is happy he was able to fit a technology in that will move the company forward.
A few months later after the new sales manager starts, he requests a reporting capable excel services, and a business intelligence application for his department. This is what he had at his last (Fortune 500) company and it made the group overall more productive. Welcome to the business requirements phase of the plan.
The technologist is now over his head. He understands the administration of the SharePoint environment as far as creating new site and subsites, making lists with custom fields, and alerts, but now we are talking about more development, business analysis and architecture. The company makes the demands on the IT department...which has a hard time completing the tasks.
One of two things happen. One, the company figures out that it cannot support the requirement either technically or monetarily and scraps the idea completely. Two, the company finds the money necessary to hire outside consultants to deploy and train the users how to use it effectively. The latter are often companies realizing they need to keep up and stay ahead of the competition. The former are strictly focused on the bottom line and are willing to be a little behind the competition.
Either way, this is what I have discovered over the years, Technologist are the tail of the the business dog. The tail can wag the dog only until the dog discovers and chases it own tail...then the dog wags the tail. The dog should always wag the tail.
An energetic and technology driven systems administrator wants to stand up and play with SharePoint in his company of 200 people in order to get his hands on it and see what it can do. He stands it up and shows how document management and shared calendaring works to his boss and co-workers. The out-of-the-box functionality of SharePoint creates enough interest that the company adopts it and starts rolling it out to the entire company.
The proud technician is happy he was able to fit a technology in that will move the company forward.
A few months later after the new sales manager starts, he requests a reporting capable excel services, and a business intelligence application for his department. This is what he had at his last (Fortune 500) company and it made the group overall more productive. Welcome to the business requirements phase of the plan.
The technologist is now over his head. He understands the administration of the SharePoint environment as far as creating new site and subsites, making lists with custom fields, and alerts, but now we are talking about more development, business analysis and architecture. The company makes the demands on the IT department...which has a hard time completing the tasks.
One of two things happen. One, the company figures out that it cannot support the requirement either technically or monetarily and scraps the idea completely. Two, the company finds the money necessary to hire outside consultants to deploy and train the users how to use it effectively. The latter are often companies realizing they need to keep up and stay ahead of the competition. The former are strictly focused on the bottom line and are willing to be a little behind the competition.
Either way, this is what I have discovered over the years, Technologist are the tail of the the business dog. The tail can wag the dog only until the dog discovers and chases it own tail...then the dog wags the tail. The dog should always wag the tail.
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