Tools for your SharePoint 2013 development toolbox

Check out these great articles that walk you through the new tools and techniques that every developer should have in their toolbox.


http://zimmergren.net/technical/tools-for-your-sharepoint-2013-development-toolbox

Automating SharePoint Development – Iterative Development Process

Check out these great articles that walk you through how to set up most of recent projects with routines for the daily iterative development work. This includes Continuous Integration, Nightly Builds, Automated SharePoint Deployments and Automated UITesting. 

http://zimmergren.net/business/automating-sharepoint-development-iterative-development-process

how I’ve set up most of my recent projects with routines for the daily iterative development work. This includes Continuous Integration, Nightly Builds, Automated SharePoint Deployments and Automated UITesting. Pretty slick. - See more at: http://zimmergren.net/business/automating-sharepoint-development-iterative-development-process#sthash.XiEdcSkr.dpuf

Best practices for installing, configuring SQL Server 2012 for Sharepoint 2013

Best Practices for SQL Server Database 2012 settings, check out these great articles that walk you through the installation process for SQL Server 2012 SP1, and in the companion articles,  explain the post-installation configuration changes should made to SharePoint 2013. As an added bonus, a 27-minute video walkthrough of the same SQL Server installation and configuration.

Set Up SQL Server 2012 as a SharePoint 2013 Database Server
http://sharepointpromag.com/sql-server-2012/sql-server-2012-sharepoint-2013-database-server-setup

Configure SQL Server 2012 for SharePoint 2013
http://sharepointpromag.com/sql-server-2012/configure-sql-server-2012-sharepoint-2013

Fine-Tune Your SQL Server 2012 Configuration for SharePoint 2013
http://sharepointpromag.com/sql-server-2012/fine-tune-your-sql-server-2012-configuration-sharepoint-2013

Top 25 Most Popular Project Management Blogs of 2013

Below is a list of the most popular top 25 project management blogs that have been visited from ProjectNewsToday.com over 2013:

1. Herding Cats
2. PMI Blog - Voices on Project Management
3. QuantmLeap
4. Arras People - How to Manage a Camel
5. A Girls Guide To Project Management
6. Virtual Project Consulting
7. Zilicus
8. The Tao of Project Management
9. ProjectManager.com
10. Ron Rosenhead
11. Leadership Freak
12. Mike Clayton
13. The Program Manager
14. Brad Egeland
15. Musings on Project Management
16. Leadership Thoughts
17. Gina Abudi
18. Sensible Project Manager
19. Better Projects
20. Software Project Management
21. Ahha Moments
22. Guerilla Project Management
23. Lazy Project Manager
24. Henny Portman
25. EarthPM

I highly recommend that you check these sites out and subscribe to their updates.

Case Study: SharePoint Governance Lessons Learned

Christy Punch, Senior Intranet Strategist at SCANA Corp and Share Conference speaker tells us about the lessons she learnt when implementing a governance plan in her organisation and shares her tips on what (and what not) to do.

Times are tight. You'll have to make do. We hear it all the time in business and unfortunately there are not many organisations or industries that are exempt from hearing these phrases.

When faced with tight budgets and limited resources, sorting out SharePoint governance can be a daunting task. Especially if you're largely managing it yourself. But SharePoint governance is an important piece of the puzzle to get right and resource strain should not be a reason to forget about it altogether.

The good news is that it can be done with limited resources and virtually no budget. With some careful planning and strategic positioning, you too can create a solid governance plan that everyone can get on board with.

Here are three lessons Christy Punch with SCANA Corporation shared with us that she learned from putting together a SharePoint governance plan at her organisation that may help you when thinking about your own plan.

Do your homework  

Christy found that the best approach for her organisation was to do a lot of the work ahead of time and keep it very simple.

Based on her experience of managing the intranet and working with different people across the organisation, she developed and documented processes, guidelines, training plans, security levels and roles- all the elements she knew her intranet stakeholders were going to be concerned about. Christy made sure this governance documentation was simple and succinct. For example, the SCANA Corp. intranet guidelines for what content belongs on the intranet is only eight bullets long.

Once you have all your governance elements together, you’re ready to talk to the business.

Don’t get everyone in the same room  

One mistake Christy thinks a lot of people make is pulling 10-20 people representing each area of the company together in a room to decide on a governance strategy. What happens here is there are too many cooks in the proverbial SharePoint kitchen. Most people don't know where to begin, in fact most people don't even understand what SharePoint governance is!

Christy instead created processes and documented everything ahead of time before meeting with stakeholders. Then she met with stakeholders individually and walked each through the governance plans and documentation. She explained what they had set up and what risk mitigation plans were in place to address the stakeholder’s unique concerns. Christy then had each stakeholder sign the document to say they had seen it and that they gave their approval to go ahead.

A key consideration here is to make sure to explain how each part of the governance plan acknowledges their concerns and issues. What Christy found was that most stakeholders were so impressed that the team went ahead and did the work upfront and were willing to own governance. It made the governance buy-in process go very smoothly.

Have a retention policy 

 Christy told us that if they could have done one thing differently, it would have been to build a retention policy into the governance plan from the beginning. For example, what do you do with content that is no longer relevant on your intranet, but you need a record of it? What happens to that PDF form that’s been updated? Does the older version need to be archived?

This is one thing Christy and her team at SCANA did not do when they created their initial governance, but something they are currently trying to get in place before the upgrade to SharePoint 2013 next year. The company has existing retention policies for email, personal drives, and shared drives, but the team didn’t consider creating a policy for the intranet. Christy admits that it is an easy need to overlook, because when you launch your new intranet with updated and new content, you don’t really think you’ll need a retention policy.

Even with audits in place to keep content up-to-date and to ensure governance is being followed, four years later we make retention decisions on a case-by-case basis. Content is only growing and we realize that a formal retention policy is needed more than ever.

Three Common Mistakes with SharePoint Governance

Most organisations understand that a good governance policy is essential for any SharePoint deployment. So they create a governance plan. Done. Unfortunately that’s not the way it works. SharePoint governance is a complicated beast and many-a-plan has failed to be implemented because of lack of communication, over complication or producing an epic document that no one reads.

Let us outline three common mistakes people make with governance plans and how we can avoid making them.

1. People don’t know why they should follow your governance policy What often happens with 

SharePoint governance plans is that they’re produced (usually a lengthy document), uploaded to SharePoint along with an email to staff saying it’s there and they should refer to it for any SharePoint related guidance. This method of communication is what I call "toss it over the fence and hope that someone catches it". Do this and it’s very unlikely that your SharePoint governance document is going to be read, let alone followed.

Fix it 

Once your SharePoint governance policy is finished, make sure you communicate why you want people to follow this. Simply stating that people should follow it is not going to cut it. Telling people that they have to follow these policies just because is not going to be as effective as telling them if you tag your document it will make it easier to find later on. Or by following this policy you are helping us avoid legal issues.

Think about your own governance policies and what positive effects will flow from following them. Are there some time consuming tasks that can be sped up by following correct SharePoint governance policy? Will complying with these policies improve business productivity? Will it help staff build better working relationships with their colleagues? Most people have a commitment to making the business work as well as to their colleagues but only if they understand why they are doing it.

2. You make it hard for people to be compliant 

Complying with a governance policy is important, especially when there are legal ramifications. For example, one of the bigger issues especially in the US is that if you have a governance policy and you're not following it, you have created a big litigation risk. So one of the real reasons to focus on governance is to avoid the risk of not meeting legal requirements or having to spend a lot of money in the eDiscovery process when you get sued.

But perhaps people don’t know about this risk (see number one above) or the process for complying contains so many steps and is so time consuming that people are not going to bother with it.

Fix it 


Automate as much as possible to take the hard work out of complying with your SharePoint governance policy. Use templates so that all sites start with good governance built right in. When possible, use a third-party tool to make it easier to ensure compliance.

3. Your SharePoint governance policy is a beast of a document 

We’re really good at writing 100+ page governance documents. Even if you believe it’s a masterpiece and you can think of nothing better than pouring a good glass of red and settling in for the night to read it, I don’t know many people who would agree. It’s a shame because your governance plan actually contains valuable information that people need to know.

Fix it 

No one reads long documents so don’t create a SharePoint governance plan as a long, boring document. Think about creating small bits of consumable information. Wiki pages and quick guides are a great way to easily great small, visually appealing consumable bits of governance guidance.

But if you really want to make it easy for people, deliver your governance content in the context of where people work. For the most part, people won’t pay much attention to governance (or training) until they need to know how to do something. Try to go for “just in time governance”: small chunks of SharePoint governance information delivered at the moment you need it.

For example, if I’m creating a document, I’m probably concentrating on writing the document, not thinking about what file naming convention I should use. I’m only worried about this when it comes to saving my document. So ideally you want your quick guide about file naming conventions to surface when I’m about to save it. Like magic!

A simple, “no code” way to do this is to use Content Editor Web Parts (CEWP) on document library pages. CEWPs allow you to surface information “in place” for this kind of thing.

Although SharePoint governance plans can be seen as just a necessity, the information in your plan is extremely valuable and can help make life easier, not harder, for your users. Make sure you’re communicating the value to your users, making it easy through automation tools and providing “just in time” governance and training.



 

Infrastructure Design Changes in SharePoint 2013

Great presentation from Michael Noel "Infrastructure Design Changes in SharePoint 2013"