Selling SharePoint 2010 to Your Enterprise

By Mimi Dionne (@cawprhyd) Jan 11, 2012

Communicating how your organization may implement SharePoint 2010 best is a very delicate message. Clearly communicating the value for every department, while acknowledging their different needs, is an important step in the implementation process. Introduce the language below to market gingerly towards the user community and the project implementation team. Intersperse these phrases in tandem with less records jargon-specific terms.

Archiving

Archiving is an indistinct word that has several (each very different!) connotations: the IT version of transferring data to backup locations, the user interpretation of declaring a record (either in the Records Center or via In-Place Records Management), or the archivist’s long-term perspective on digital storage. Records Management should prepare the SharePoint 2010 project team to address all three.

Authenticity, Reliability, Integrity and Usability

The Records and Information Management standard ISO 15489 outlines the four basic records and information management tenets of authenticity, reliability, integrity and usability. An authentic record is one that can be proven to be what it should be: created or sent by the creator or sender, or created or sent at the moment it was created. In other words, the record isn’t altered once a document is declared to be one. Reliability means the record exists in its correct location. If the record has integrity, the user trusts the record to remain the version they deposited into the Records Center. Usability refers to the record’s value after it is deposited into the central repository. SharePoint 2010’s architectural capability somewhat adeptly supports them. To fill in the deltas, use the records management policy and the retention schedule as the drivers for production environment design.

Availability

When the software’s perceived level of quality drops below its expected value, it is terrifically difficult for the implementation team to recover reputation. Since records content will be stored in SharePoint 2010, its availability is a significant corporate investment that must meet users’ expectations. If the Records Center is utilized, the Records Management team may serve as a facilitator in this issue between the Information Technology and the user community. A continuous, open path of communication will help all parties maintain the best project implementation.

Codify the Company’s Goals & Strategies

The company intranet is a form of self-expression. Each department’s internal functions will be eager to learn more about how the intranet published on SharePoint 2010 may be constructed for their own best interest and use including planned corporate strategies and goals, which should be corporate records. Establishing the Records Center (and the Document Center for reference material) will require some investment into site collection, libraries and records series management. Essentially, departments will create their own equivalent to knowledge management “Communities of Practice,” which may in turn reduce some information silos while honoring carefully constructed boundaries. Hopefully the Records Management team will have an opportunity to impress upon departments SharePoint 2010’s ease of construction.

Consistency

In SharePoint 2010 terms, consistency is another expression for planning logical and topological components, intranet design and information architecture. The records approach must be very objective. A phased overview should outline basic, intermediate, and advanced records services via SharePoint 2010. The records piece should be deliberately focused with an eye towards scalability and applicability to any software the organization chooses to implement.

Content Management Rules and Migration

Content management rules establish what data lives where. If it’s not implemented, then the company’s records retention schedule is a content management policy only. Policy should mature into procedure. While executives may consider the SharePoint 2010 Records Management features superfluous, the records team considers these features the next step in the growth of the schedule. One way to illustrate the benefits of having a retention schedule is to refer to it during the migration of content from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010. The records retention schedule tells the organization what electronic objects should be transferred.