How are SharePoint and the New York Times Bestseller List Alike?

Books don't end up on the New York Times bestseller list because they're actually READ by people. They end up there because a whole bunch of people bought them. As a wannabe novelist, it was quite the revelation for me when I finally acknowledged this fact. (It didn't help me to be a better novelist, but at least it made me a little more hopeful: So what that someone was published--he still wasn't getting read, just like me.)

The same with SharePoint. I cannot tell you how many times a person will tell me that their organization purchased SharePoint 2010 but then adds, "We haven't deployed it yet." Next time you hear Microsoft say how great sales of SharePoint 2010 are, remember this: Sales may be great, but that doesn't mean the product is actually being used.

So what about those organizations, the ones that purchased SharePoint 2010 but haven't yet deployed it? What are they waiting on?

Well, training, for one thing. Their personnel need time to set aside for learning SharePoint 2010's ins and outs. Testing, for another. Then there's always the temptation to breeze through governance, a highly underrated and overlooked process within SharePoint deployment. Governance takes time--determining policies, procedures, scope, needs, and basically setting forth an organization's attitude, philosophy, and creating a how-to guide and what-if manual to everything SharePoint.

Then there's the happily-ever-afters, the scenarios where deployment has gone well, and SharePoint 2010 is cruising along, nothing's breaking but something's not quite right. Some probing determines a cause: Users aren't using it as much as management and IT had hoped. I've watched that scenario unfold over the last six to eight months at a mid-sized company: IT busted its chops to get a good product out there and after much fanfare by PR and HR, the general user reaction is--can you guess?--silence (cue up sound of crickets chirping).

What's the answer? I don't know. We're still hanging out here, throwing great articles up on the web, hoping you'll read them and even more, hoping they'll help you.

Here are a few you might like:

SharePoint Governance: 
"SharePoint Deployment and Governance," by Dave Chennault
"SharePoint Garbage and Governance," by Dan Holme
"When and How to Include End Users in Sharepoint Migration Planning," by Christian Buckley

SharePoint Migration:
"Migrating to SharePoint 2010," by Randy Williams