James Robertson – the CEO of Step Two Designs – doesn’t know it, but I have long been a big fan of his work.
Last month (May 2009) he released his latest offering in “guide” format. A short and eminently practical book that gives the inside track on how to think about and progress the soft tasks involved in planning, establishing and continuing to evolve an Intranet.
- What Every Intranet Team Should Know
As any Intranet Manager knows only too well there are few silver bullets to achieving effectiveness. That said, however, after some twenty years of praxis in the field of Intranet design there are emergent guidelines – some might say “best practices” – for achieving success in what is a graveyard slot in web solution design (i.e. I suspect that even my colleagues at Storm ID find it weird that I “like” working in this area).
Quite simply, Robertson’s (and his colleagues) book is excellent, and quite unique in the field. Without going into detail, the material is based on a summation of his company’s ongoing work in providing practical consulting advice on Intranets to a wide range of companies. What’s gratifying about the book is that within this slim volume there is gold which can only be found by working on the front line.
What’s this got to do with SharePoint I hear you ask?
Well – to be honest – everything!
Despite the ongoing debate on the web by journalists and analysts, users and consultants, it is hard to come to anything other than the conclusion that (if well conceived) MOSS 2007 is a strong and viable software platform to establish an Intranet or Corporate Portal.
Yes, undeniably, SharePoint still has weaknesses in the 2007 version (and quite frankly it was very poor in its 2003 offering), but yet it does most of the basics reasonably, and more than a few things very well, in the Intranet space.
On this, more later….
But Intranets don’t magic themselves into existence and they don’t maintain themselves. This then is a frontier of Intranet solution design where we need pioneers like Robertson’s Step Two Designs. As the hackneyed saying goes, a SharePoint Intranet is far more than just a technology solution; rather, it has an intimate political, social and informational relationship to the organisation in question that means that the softer elements of solution design must be attended to if you want success.
Thus, if you want success, you could do a lot worse than by trying this guy’s book. It can be ordered from Step Two Designs for a mere Aus $89. It is well worth the dosh, and will save most – if not all of us – in the field a great deal of misguided effort in what is a clear and simple read.
SharePoint: Websites, Intranets & Solution Design 