This Is Not a SharePoint Rant

The software product manager was demoing all the wonderful new features coming down the road for the software product I use weekly. But he still hadn’t touched on a flaw in the product that requires me to email a coworker to let him know I am done with the tool so he can go in and work in it. Finally I asked: Would it be fixed in the next release?

Product manager: No. It’s not a flaw—we assume you’re working alone in the tool and don’t need input from someone else.

Me: But that’s not how we work.

Product manager: And look at all these bells and whistles in the upcoming release!

Are we in such a baroque (broke?) era of software design that we have to complicate everything we touch? Could someone, for once, stop? After you add the useful features, just stop and don’t add the fussy, gimmicky, ticky-tacky features just for the sake of having a new release to hawk.

That said, I’m not putting SharePoint 2010 in the latter category. Yet. From what I’ve seen, it’s got some really cool features and you’d be hard pressed to cobble together the equivalent from any collection of non-Microsoft products. (Cobble is the key concept here.)

Sure, for some companies it might be overkill. For some companies, Outlook and Exchange are overkill. You have to assess the technology and your organization’s needs and decide—we can’t decide for you.

A reader called us out for having “too much SharePoint 2010 coverage.” I can understand where he’s coming from—obviously most organizations are not on SharePoint 2010 right now. We have, however, had four or so years to write about MOSS 2007 and WSS, and I would hope we’ve covered a lot of the issues and concerns admins have. But maybe we’ve still got some gaps. Like SharePoint has….