Great SharePoint How To

Many organisations roll-out SharePoint without taking into consideration the resources needed to own and manage SharePoint, especially the human resources. The initial focus is often placed on the technical side of the development and the initial go-live, ongoing management of the site is given little thought. One area which is often given the least resources to is training, which is more often than not a mistake. Without adequate training for all users concerned the SharePoint deployment will fail.

This document seeks to detail the 5 skilled separate concerns needed to manage and leverage SharePoint as well as the training required for each.

Even though this article details these concerns separately this will not mean that they can't be performed through the same person. The only caveat to which is that the main SharePoint owner should never be in IT - this really is explained in a separate document that's available titled Seven Pillars of SharePoint.

It must also be noted that the specifications of concern is just not absolute, and as every organization differs so will be the responsibilities allocated to a skill. These responsibilities should be tuned to suit the internal layout of your organization as well as the skills you have in-house. This document will guide you through identifying the skilled areas and should help you to choose the moat appropriate member of staff to fulfil each role.

Once SharePoint has been deployed in your organization there are actually several skills needed to maintain the system and to develop it in line with your corporate strategy. These skills are best viewed as separate concerns, and if possible best serviced by different people. Obviously this isn't always the situation, but by analysing the skills matrix as if it were separate people it's much easier to understand.

You'll find four main players worldwide of SharePoint - SharePoint System Administrator, Super User, SharePoint Designer and Web Developer. These terms will be referred to continually throughout this Microsoft Document Management.

We have selected to omit the fifth player from this diagram -the End User. End Users contribute to SharePoint but are not necessary for developing the system; we're going to discuss End Users at the end of this document.

Skill Area 1 - SharePoint System Administrator

Perhaps one of the most misunderstood skills in SharePoint is that of the System Administrator. Lots of people confuse the System Administrator with a concept generally known as a SharePoint Administrator (we make reference to this role as the Super User). Instead of explaining the differences between the two roles I'll explain the function of the SharePoint System Administrator in detail in the section and the Super User in detail further on within this document.