The Importance of a SharePoint Vision - Raona Business Value Event.
Session describing the reasons why we need vision, some tools and techniques for facilitating your organisations SharePoint vision and how Change Management helps amplify and sustain the drive towards your vision.
Soulsailor Consulting is a small micro-consultancy focussed on:"Enabling organisational value by positively disrupting technology projects"
Available on Leanpub and Amazon, Createspace & Lulu
SharePoint rocks, you can achieve amazing results with the platform…
Project failure – is not that you haven’t delivered SharePoint project, hit the targets on the Gannt chart – its that you’ve not delivered the expected outcomes of the business:User Experience isn’t what they wantNot delivering business valuePoor user adoptionLack of ROI
We forget why we are doing these projects and who for
We get wrapped up in the shinytools and technology!
SharePoint projects failing is fundamentally because of the “Celery Effect”Celery contains 6-8 calories. But the mere act of digesting said stalk burns more like 12-14 calories, resulting in a negative caloric intake.This is like spending lots of time and effort, licenses, hardware and project time and money, but not delivering anything the business needs¾ of SharePoint projects I was aware of over the past 5 years DID NOT deliver true Business ValueWhat are some of the key reasons?
No vision and insufficient Governance is the main reasonResults in the IT and business rift growing further… burning bridges when we’re meant to be working together and delivering measurable value.
We’re looking at problems with an IT/Technology focus – SharePoint Knows Nothing…It doesn’t know your business, sector, organisation, business problem
Governance tends to be technology and feature ledWe allow projects to be specified as SharePoint features not business outcomesWe ask people what do they want and they ask what the technology can do… saying “anything” never works, so we turn to the wheel for a grounded explanation.
Notice I haven’t said that the technology sucksI haven’t said that SharePoint “can’t be made to do that”The technology isn’t the problem here guys…You guys are awesome and we can make SharePoint do ANYTHING… So why is this all so hard?Why are there SharePoint project problems?Why do we have a HUGE SharePoint Business Value problem?
We have no Vision
Technology isn’t the answer.
Rules, processes and threats to people to use our solutions arent the answer either
SharePoint projects are people projects; therefore they are inherently squishy and hard to figure out!Everything, absolutely everything we do in a SharePoint project fundamentally changed the way our users work… that’s a freaking big deal and we have to get it right!
Cynefin framework – Dave SnowdenExchange projects are ComplicatedSharePoint projects are Complex – Why, because you don’t know that you will make progress towards your goal until you’ve done something (i.e. delivered some features for users to use)
I think the problem is people!Why because SharePoint projects are people projects, fundamentally we are changing the way people work, that’s a HUGE deal and we need to get it right!– Dave Snowden Cynefin Framework helps us to understand why and put context around the approach we should take for SharePoint and it’s Governance.So Governance that is just a set of concrete rules is more of a hindrance than a help in these situations
VisionWe tend to focus on putting the technology in and hoping users will see the benefit!If we think of Tech projects as being like a RELATIONSHIP:Flirting is working out why?Asking to commit (marriage or moving in together) is the business caseWedding planning is delivering the projectWedding day and Honeymoon is go liveFuture together is business as usual
For on-going value I see Governance as key, but that’s not the focus of this talk.Latin for Governance is ‘To Steer’Sailing AnalogySo we need a vision
Vision / Strategy is equivalent to the ‘Difference the solution will make to our users and customers and stakeholders’This is much easier to gain a shared understanding and commitment from and align our projects to than a Vision or strategy full of platitudes
** Demonstrate / Sketch and use post-it notesContext – Cover StoryGamestorming
** Demonstrate / Sketch and use post-it notesContext – Project Business Model CanvasBusiness Model Generation – Alexander Ostwerwalder & Yves Pigneur
Draw OutVision +ve Change Business Outcomes Social features Project GoalProgress towards your business goalsHow does the delivery of social features meet our project goals, how does that meet the programme goals how does that meet our organisational vision and strategy?
Let me take you way way away from the SharePoint World!Taken from the book ‘The Lean Start-Up’ by Eric RiesWe will focus on one key aspect for this talk – ‘Innovation Accounting’.
In the book it talks about ‘ Innovation Accounting’Assumption is where we are going / what we are trying to achieveMetric is how we would measure that progress (not a Vanity metric)Experiment – Is what we will build to test the assumptionMinimal Viable Product
We need to avoid SharePoint Celery, we need to avoid fed-up and angry and disillusionedusers
Difference it makesBusiness ModelGoal AlignmentInnovation Accounting