Early Bird Special – Register before Friday, October 23rd and receive an additional $100 off!
SharePoint Beagle Newsletter, October 2009, Issue 1
Early Bird Special – Register before Friday, October 23rd and receive an additional $100 off!
The Education and Training of SharePoint End Users
Let’s get right to the heart of the matter, shall we? Most SharePoint professionals agree that no single person can be an expert in all aspects of SharePoint. Creating production quality solutions using SharePoint is not an easy task. The platform is so large, it’s almost impossible to wrap your mind around all of the components, even when you work with it on a daily basis.
What’s a SharePoint Power User to do when they are asked, (we won’t use the ugly word “mandated”), to use SharePoint to help manage their company’s documents, processes and communication? As Paul Culmsee would say, “That’s a wicked problem!”
At first, most people will flail and flounder, trying to get a handle on what they need to do, concentrating too much on SharePoint and not enough on the business solutions trying to be solved. The reflective SharePoint Power User will recognize early in the game they are over their head and start looking for help.
As they turn to the internet for sources of information, they find most articles and resources are aimed at developers, programmers and IT staff, with little to no regard for the day-to-day aspects of setting up a usable business solution using out of the box SharePoint components.
That leaves the need to get some training, and there lies the rub.
There are dozens of company’s asking for your training dollars, trying to convince you to use their services to help train SharePoint End Users. How do you decide what type of training is needed? What should you look for in a company? Is there an optimal method for delivering that training?
Tough questions. Let’s take a look at some ideas and see what we can come up with.
How do you decide the type of training needed?
The first consideration when looking for SharePoint training is: What are you trying to accomplish? Why are you taking training? Not all training is for every user. There are different levels of training.
At conferences and SharePoint Saturdays, sessions are usually segmented into 100, 200, 300, etc. levels. Entry level overviews are given in 100 level sessions, and each subsequent session delves deeper into the guts of SharePoint. The first step when considering training is to determine the appropriate level of training.
SharePoint Training for Business and Management
Overview workshops are good for management and business decision personnel needing to get a quick handle on the business uses of SharePoint and why they might consider using it. A good training session in this category will include high level overviews of what SharePoint is and why to consider it, alternatives to SharePoint, the ability to talk about specific business cases where SharePoint has been used in the real world, lots of diagrams and images to get the conceptual points across. Expect no code and no hands-on in these session. A typical session will run less than half a day, possibly just a few hours, to accommodate overbooked management schedules.
SharePoint Training for Information Worker
Information Workers are the largest group at the base of the SharePoint pyramid. The dilemma is how much training should this group receive? The answer from my perspective is, “As little as possible, but as much as is necessary“. Give them just enough to help them get their job done more efficiently.
Information Workers don’t care about SharePoint. They don’t care about metadata, structure or the cool thing you figured out how to do with a Data View Web Part yesterday. As a matter of fact, they won’t even understand what you’re talking about when you use those words.
Basic Information Worker training needs to deal with simple, hands-on exercises that will make an immediate day-to-day difference in how they can get their job done. Anything more is waste of their time and your money.
Power User and Site Administration Training
SharePoint Power Users are the core evangelists in your company. These are the people interested in SharePoint, interested in finding out it capabilities, interested in working on contextual in-house solutions that other workers can use.
Most of your training dollars will be spent with this group. Power Users usually have some experience with SharePoint through online research, hands-on flailing and the desire to learn more about how it works.
The most effective type of training for this group is hands-on, discussion based sessions. Problems can be hashed out in open discussion using company business processes as the contextual base for the workshop material. Power Users are looking for solutions, not functionality. Building a workshop around specific solutions is the most effective and immediate way to make a difference with the group.
Site Collection Administration Training
Site Collection Admin training is overlooked in many instances because there is no plan for rollout of a site collection, it kind of just “happens”. Good SCA training will include extensive work with Information Architecture, Content Types, security and basic navigation design.
SCA training must paint a broad swath since this position will be the basic foundation of the SharePoint support system. The Site Collection Administrator will not only handle the structure and management of the site collection, they will also be the ones looked to when question arise, whether they be network, hardware, software, or End User related. The SCA must know the areas of responsibility that they actually have control over and those that need to be pushed over to IT and server administration.
A good training program for this group includes hands-on exercises in security settings as well as labs on planning and information design. Prerequisites might included a basic comfort level with creating sites, lists and libraries, managing information display through default web parts, and with hands on experience in MS Office integration points with SharePoint.
Information Architecture Training in SharePoint
Somewhere along the line, someone in the company is going to realize that SharePoint is growing out of control, there’s no planned structure to the growth and it’s starting to be even more of a problem than the file server that was being used before SharePoint rode onto the scene. Hopefully, this will happen during the planning process, but probably not. What’s a poor SharePoint evangelist to do?
Information Architecture is the key to getting this multi-headed hydra under control.
It’s impossible in the space of a few short days to give someone the tools necessary to become an Information Architect. Who will be responsible for the overall structure, the maintenance of the structure, the organization of information itself? It’s one of the shortcomings of SharePoint as it is deployed in most companies.
I personally believe the basic Information Architecture of a SharePoint implementation should be done hand-in-hand with an experienced, professional Information Architect consultant. This is someone who has extensive experience in taxonomy and information organization. Working as an in-house apprentice with such a person will allow you to understand the decisions made in structuring information, the concepts needed to expand and maintain those structures and the background to expand on the concepts once the consultant has completed the initial plan.
Information Architecture training is a continuing process, not a two day workshop.
What should you look for in a training company?
Using the criteria described above, there are basic things to look for when evaluating SharePoint training companies. First off, do you really NEED to hire a training company when it comes to basic Information Worker training?
Information Worker Training
Yes, it’s easy and convenient to hire someone to come in and teach your Information Workers how to use lists and libraries, but is that really the best use of your money? A good trainer is going to charge you $2500 to $3500 per day plus expenses. Where’s the value proposition in that?
As an alternative, you might consider web based training or recording your own in-house training screencasts to handle this level of user. Rob Bogue created The SharePoint Shepherd’s Guide to SharePoint with this in mind, Steve Smith at Combined-Knowledge recently completed his end to end SharePoint user support system which looks very good.
There is a plethora of information on the web, including EndUserSharePoint.com ,that can be used to help Information Workers with specific uses of SharePoint.
Power Users, Site Administrator and Site Collection Administrator Training
Training companies for these types of users are prevalent. At last glance, there were 18 training vendors listed on SharePointReviews.com. When evaluating vendors, there are a few key points to keep in mind.
Do the trainers have real world experience in SharePoint? I’ve had people tell me horror stories about paying thousands of dollars for training, and then have the “instructor” read directly from PowerPoint decks, unable to answer questions. Ouch!
Do the trainers have basic presentation skills? Just because someone knows a subject inside out, doesn’t mean they know how to teach the subject. If you’re going to be spending the big bucks to get training, get real evaluations from companies offered as references. Don’t go exclusively by the reviews that appear online.
Does the outline talk about menus and SharePoint functionality, or does it outline specific hands-on solutions you will be able to use immediately after training? This is one of my pet peeves. I really don’t care about function set training. I can learn that stuff from a book or a blog post. What I’m looking for is real world stories, real world solutions that will be implemented and discussed during the training. I want to talk about MY problems! I want to get my hands dirty!
What are the take-aways from the training? A lot of companies make a big deal about printing big, thick, impressive binders with a full page of paper for each slide in the deck. What a waste of paper and resources! When is the last time you got one of those and really used it? I must have a half dozen or so of those taking up space on my bookshelf and I still can’t figure out why.
For me, a take-away is something that can be used immediately at the conclusion of the training. At the conclusion of my workshops, I ask each of the participants “What one thing will you implement immediately when you go back to your workstation?” This is a real take-way because it helps the participants zero in on something they can accomplish immediately and have something to show within hours of leaving the class.
A take-away doesn’t have to be a physical, tangible piece of property. I can be as little as a single concept that triggers an entire thought process, or as large as a structured plan for developing a complex site collection.
What is the time frame for the workshop? This is critical. If a company is promising to make you a Site Manager or get you up to speed on Information Architecture in a single, one day session, walk away. It’s impossible. On the reverse end, if a training vendor is offering a five day session for basic Information Worker training, is it worth twenty people being away from their desk for five days to learn how to use a list or library? Evaluate the time frame against the potential value and see how it plays out.
What is the financial value, the Return on Investment (ROI) of the training? The value of good training is that it can pay for itself almost immediately. An experienced trainer with the right solutions to show the participants can make an immediate difference in the work processes of the people taking the workshop.
I have had people implement a workshop solution within one hour of seeing it during a training session and come back to me that same day to say the out of the box solutions built during the workshop (KPIs, in this instance) saved them from spending thousands of dollars on a third party vendor’s solution they were evaluating.
This is real world evaluation: What is the financial value of the solutions shown in the workshop.
The Most Effective Training Method
I have been a teacher in one form or another for 35 years, with over a decade in technology training. I’ve taught at companies such as Autodesk, Hewlett-Packard, SGI, Charles Schwab, Credit-Suisse, Intuit and many others throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. From that experience I’ve come to the conclusion thatthere is nothing that beats solutions based training. Not in any language. Not in any culture. Solutions transcend the language barrier.
To put that in perspective, when you signup to learn a musical instrument, do want to learn a bunch of unrelated chords or do you want to learn a song you heard recently? What motivated you to decide to pay someone so that you could learn an instrument?
That’s a real question. Think about. People come to training because they have a specific desire that motivates them, a specific problem they want answered. Showing them a bunch of menu functions isn’t going to do the trick. What they need to see is a solution, based in real world context, that will help them solve a specific problem.
I have written numerous articles for EndUserSharePoint.com on developing presentation and training materials to accommodate different types of adult learning styles. It all comes down to a few, very basic concepts:
- Make the training relevant to an immediate business need.
- Create materials that are context based to the specific audience you are speaking to.
- Distill the information into the smallest digestible chunks so that it can be easily absorbed and internalized.
To show you how much I believe in the concept of Solutions Based Training, at EndUserSharePoint.com our live online workshops are 100% solutions based. You won’t see generic workshops on how to use SharePoint. You’ll see titles such as “Killer Calendars in SharePoint”, “Manage User Input with Dynamic Feedback Forms”, “Easy Tabs Interface – Simple Navigation for Complex Information”, “Build a Site Permissions Dashboard – No Code Required!”, “Case Studies in SharePoint WSS Dashboards”.
What’s the common theme in the listed workshops? They are all solutions based. In solutions based training, the participants focus on an immediate solution to a specific business problem or requirement. Learning SharePoint is a by-product of that solution.
That turns the learning paradigm upside down. It means that when looking for SharePoint training, you don’t necessarily need the most expensive, detailed, down in the trenches training. It means you look for training based upon specific business needs. You look for training that solves a specific business problem.
Where to go from here…
Training of any kind is expensive, not just in dollars but in time spent, mental bandwidth and resources needed to deliver the training. When considering training, evaluate your expectations. What do you want to accomplish by participating in the training session?
At the beginning of my workshops, I always ask the question, “If there is one thing you can walk away with after taking this session, what will it be?” When you can walk into a training session with that thought in mind and hold the presenter to that path, you’ll get the most from any training, not just SharePoint training.
Best of luck with your SharePoint training.
Mark Miller, Founder and Editor
EndUserSharePoint.com
Mark Miller is Founder and Editor of one of the world’s largest SharePoint
communities, EndUserSharePoint.com.
He is adamant about delivering training to SharePoint End Users through building
context based solutions during live workshops.
In the past year, Mark has moved his entire teaching model
online, delivering two to three live online workshops per week. You can view a
list of upcoming workshops on
the EndUserSharePoint.com site and sign up for the
EndUserSharePoint.com
Weekly Newsletter that offers content exclusively for SharePoint End Users.
SharePoint Intranets – New Roles and Responsibilities
by Bob Mixon
Many companies are struggling with the feeling that something is missing with their SharePoint implementation. They have savvy end users and a fantastic IT development and administration divisions; so where is this missing link?
What Are We Building?
Before we dive too deep in to roles & responsibilities, we need to ask ourselves “What is it we are building?”… Having a clear understand of this will aid with the team member decisions down the road.
The term Intranet is so overly-used; I feel it is best to use a more suited name. I know for me, the name Intranet reminds me of a relatively static site that contains brochure-ware pages about departments and links to a few key documents. In addition, Information Technology owned the technology for these sites and was, for the most part, responsible for all content updates.
Do we need a More Suitable Name?
If your goals include moving document assets from file shares and local drives to SharePoint, you are building a Document Management System (DMS) or Information Asset Management System. I understand these names are too technical for the business. If you choose to call it your Intranet Portal make sure you help the business culture understand that it is different; they will be playing a very large part in the management of their own content.
New Roles & Responsibilities that may be needed
There are many new roles & responsibilities that are required to successfully create, deploy, and manage/optimize a SharePoint Intranet implementation. The size of your organization, the intended purpose of SharePoint, current team members and competencies are a few of the factors that will aid in determining if these can be managed by existing staff or new will be required.
A few of the more common roles & responsibilities I see missing in teams are:
- Lack of resources to train users; administrators, power users and contributors.
- An experienced enterprise-class Information architect.
- An experienced knowledge manager.
The teams required to successfully roll-out a SharePoint Intranet will also depend on what it is you are trying to accomplish with the product; however, the ones listed below I find to be quite consistent across all.
The two primary (and most often overlooked) areas I’ll be discussing in this article are the Business Domain SharePoint Administrators and SharePoint Intranet Implementation Team.
Business Domain SharePoint Administrator
For most organizations, the idea of a Business Domain SharePoint Administrator is quite new. Depending on the size of your organization and the level in which you plan to integrate SharePoint with your business, you will need to federate some of the Business Domain specific SharePoint Administrative tasks. These tasks will include:
- Management of Security.
- Training contributors and end users.
- Acting as front-line SharePoint support.
- Managing new requests for sites and features.
- Managing information governance.
- Evangelism and best-practice use of SharePoint.
You will need to find the appropriate individual in each Business Domain, train them and provide them with a means of communicating with the SharePoint Intranet Implementation Team members.
Management of Security
Take the management of security alone. In the old world (file shares), Information Technology was 100% responsible for the management of share and folder structure security. When these files move in to SharePoint, are we now going to ask the non-technical business user to take these responsibilities and be accountable for security? For most, this will be a daunting task, cause confusion and they will get it wrong.
The moment security is managed inappropriately and someone has access to information they shouldn’t, there will be a level of trust that is lost. I have seen this time and time again. And, trust is one of the most important aspects of this type solution we need from our business users. Think about it for a moment. If one of your goals is to attain content “Single Source of Truth” and begin to eliminate duplication, trust has to be there. If not, your users will go back to what is comfortable; copying documents locally, because this is something they trust.
Training Contributors and End Users
Providing training for content contributors and end users still has many baffled. How could a small implementation team ever accomplish the task of training hundreds, if not thousands, of users? In my opinion, one of the best possible approaches to solving this is to use a federated model that pushes the responsibility further and further out to the business. If we already have Business Domain specific SharePoint staff in divisions and departments, it may serve you well to provide them with train-the-trainer education. Allow them to take the responsibility of training their own users.
Acting as Front-line SharePoint Support
Most organizations start with a plan to use their existing help desk to manage all support needs. All too often I have seen this model fail. What usually happens is the support staff records the incident then simply pass it on to the SharePoint Intranet Implementation Team. This team quickly becomes overwhelmed and is the bottleneck with progress.
Allow your Business Domain SharePoint Administrators handle all front-line support needs. When necessary, this individual can submit an incident to your help desk; however, if well trained, I think you will find it to be a much smaller burden.
Managing New Requests for Sites and Features
One of the worst things you can do is allow the business to contact the SharePoint Intranet Implementation Team directly. I have seen this in practice and it’s not pretty; inboxes fill quickly as SharePoint gains traction and again, this team ends up being the implementation bottleneck.
I recommend you implement a request solution in SharePoint. In fact, this is one of my highest rollout prerequisites recommendations. This form-based solution should prompt the user to submit all the necessary information required to satisfy their need. For example, if it’s a new site request, collect all the information needed to provision a new site.
Before sending a new request to the SharePoint Intranet Implementation Team, the Business Domain SharePoint Administrator should receive it first; giving them an opportunity to handle it locally or pass it on for further processing. Many requests can be handled this way and never leave the business itself!
Managing Information Governance
Every division, department and group of users can have different types of Information Governance; which will depend entirely on the purpose and needs of their content/information.
Since the Business Domain SharePoint Administrator is first and foremost part of the business, they should have the knowledge required to support these governance needs.
Evangelism and best-practice use of SharePoint
In some environments, little evangelism is needed; SharePoint takes on a viral impact and spreads quickly. In other environments, this may not be the case. If your SharePoint implementation requires some level of evangelism, push that as far out to the business as possible.
Best practice use and management of content is also something that needs to be managed at the business level. Let’s take for example, the goal of reducing the amount of files attached to e-mail. A small SharePoint Intranet Implementation Team could never accomplish the goal of educating the business as to the value of doing this. However, a local savvy business user, such as your Business Domain SharePoint Administrator, can help with this. As they see it happening, they can provide much more consistent and constant feedback as to the problems it causes and how to resolve it.
SharePoint Intranet Implementation Team
I find that most SharePoint Intranet Implementation Teams consist of mainly IT staff; such as project managers, developers and infrastructure (administration) staff.
Information Architect
Many companies have IT/development staff with experience in creating web sites. Quite often I find these individuals being asked to design and implement the new SharePoint Intranet. We have to remember, the chasm between building a web site and all that is necessary to build a Document Management System is quite vast.
The team member (or members) who will be involved in the design of your solution will be required to have extensive skills in enterprise-class Information Architecture. It has been my experience that individuals who are schooled in the science and art of Library Sciences have the necessary skills.
Knowledge Management
Your initial purpose for implementing SharePoint may be to serve as a Document Management Solution. However, as you begin to see what the possibilities are, that same solution will begin to change its meaning. If implemented correctly, SharePoint can eventually become your corporate knowledge repository; providing proactive decision support to employees, customers and vendors. To accomplish this you will have a need for content consistency; including the reduction of duplication (Single Source of Truth), information governance, consistent tagging and so on.
We have to remember what the level of non-technical employee experience is. Most are not librarians or knowledge management experts. Many will have a different basic understanding of how content should be tagged. It will be the responsibility of the Knowledge Management team member(s) to aid in producing and sustaining this level of consistency.
SharePoint Administration
There are many new responsibilities that will need to be addressed, most by existing IT infrastructure, Project Management and development team members. Of those that I see quite often overlooked is Search Optimization.
The exact meaning of “search relevance” and “search optimization” will be unique for each organization. However, your SharePoint Administration team needs to be prepared to provide failed search metrics and incident reports to the SharePoint Intranet Implementation Team. Using this information and information collected from business users, the SharePoint Intranet Implementation Team can:
- Aid with business user content categorization, classification and tagging (education).
- Suggest keywords, synonyms and best bets.
- Suggest updates to search engine technology.
Conclusion
This article I covered a few of the new roles and responsibilities for creating and maintaining a Document Management System, Information Asset Management System and/or Knowledge Management System.
Remember, these systems are in a constant state of flux; changing on a regular basis. If the addition, maintenance and optimization of content stops, then the solution will be rendered useless.
Make sure to consider these new roles and responsibilities early in your implementation strategy and planning processes.
Mastering SharePoint Information Architecture with Bob Mixon
Early Bird Special – Register before Friday, October 23rd and receive an additional $100 off!
Card Sorting
Card Sorting is a technique used by myself and many Information Architects to categorize information and sites; has other applications too.
Donna Spencer, with Boxes and Arrows, wrote a fantastic article titled: “Card Sorting: A Definitive Guide“. If you are interested in this technique, I highly recommend reading this article.
