Yesterday I had lunch with two colleagues. As we chowed down on pulled pork and spiced apples, we talked about what makes something “enterprisey” and the scenarios in which going with the “right option” isn’t always the best option. It was a good lunch.
It seems like in every conversation about work in which I’m involved, the topic of SharePoint arises. Most people hate it and are aghast when I tell them that I work with SharePoint and actually like it. Of course I can understand their frustrations with SharePoint; it can be a real pain to use, especially when you don’t know what you’re doing (and it’s so easy to not know what you’re doing). When things go wrong, they go spectacularly wrong. The API is difficult to code against, the documentation is nearly non-existent, the tools for administration are a joke, and the system requirements are ridiculous. Add all that to the enormous licensing costs and you have to scratch your head while you wonder aloud, “What the heck are you thinking?”
But that’s just it: SharePoint is a challenge, and when it’s done right, when you deliver that piece of the application that SharePoint really excels at, you end up with something that feels about as close to magic as you’re going to get. Take the time to master SharePoint, and you have a tool that sometimes feels like it inherently understands your business processes. Have documents that need approvals? It’s built in. Need to store multiple business documents in a shared location with metadata to separate them? It’s built in. Need to kick off some kind of process when a piece of data changes? It’s in there. You can develop a custom ASP.NET application, host it inside SharePoint, and take advantage of what WSS and MOSS 2007 offer. That’s what we’re doing at my current customer, and each time I add a new piece of functionality to the system, such as a document library, I solve a complex business problem that formerly plagued them. The “wow factor” from that is intense.
As I work with SharePoint more and more, and embrace its quirks more and more, I remind my customers of the need for a dedicated SharePoint person on the team. That’s the thing about SharePoint: you can’t just install it and walk away. You need someone to tune it, optimize it, keep it running, and support the people who use it. It’s like a DBA, but for something a little more specialized.
Find the right person to do this and you’ll find yourself singing SharePoint’s praises. With time, the pain and suffering will all drift into the haze of days gone by.
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