Guest Column: Make Your SharePoint Projects More Successful By Using A "Dual" Architecture Approach

By Bernie Hockswender VP Marketing & Sales, i-Squared Inc.

The IT team is generally very good at managing licensing, server provisioning, network requirements, security administration etc. These are all part of the Technical Architecture required for SharePoint and squarely belong under IT management responsibility.

But mapping the Information Architecture or the "what will we accomplish and how" components are not IT issues. Planning which users and business processes will be impacted, how the site will be governed, who is responsible for content updates, which departments will be most resistant or open to adoption etc., are all issues better analyzed, mapped and managed by assigned business managers who work in conjunction with IT.

IT organizations are woefully understaffed and time constrained to do the in-depth planning, interviewing, process mapping and strategy configuration that a SharePoint "Information Architecture" component requires. Strong planning and communication of business process impact, site governance, taxonomies, metadata, user adoption and maintenance of content will avoid most of the problems found with early implementations of SharePoint. It's rare that SharePoint problems are technology related.

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