Comments on: “My sites”: do they work?

By: SharePoint My Sites Suck - The Bamboo Team Blog - Bamboo Nation

SharePoint My Sites Suck - The Bamboo Team Blog - Bamboo Nation — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:53:36 +0000

[...] "My Sites" – Do They Work? - Column Two [...]

By: Samuel

Samuel — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:13:46 +0000

I understand your concern and agree that personal sites that have to be kept up to date in “normal enterprises” regularly don’t work. But in mysite you can also ‘automatically’ bundle the documents you are contributing to in other sites. That’s nice. Furthermore you could ‘automatically’ feed HR information to your mysite and replace the regular Yellow Pages. Then you have HR info and the stuff you’re working on in one place.

By: Recommended Reading for Intranet Professionals - Week 39/2008 at Intranet Matters

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:21:36 +0000

[...] “My sites”: do they work? I would therefore argue that “my site” functionality implemented today is likely to fail in most organisations. While it may succeed in the future due to cultural or generational changes, this will not change the outcome in the short-term. More importantly, if it fails now, it may not get a second chance when the conditions are more favourable. [...]

By: Jeremy Thake

Jeremy Thake — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 01:52:52 +0000

I often find it’s a “shopping list” item that SharePoint Stakeholders ask for. The problem is they don’t know the answer to “Why do you want My Sites?” . So you set about explaining everything it can do and some scenarios in the concept of their business. I always go back to highlighting that just because Facebook works in “consumer land” doesn’t mean it’ll work in the Enterprise.
I also recommend taking the “slowly , slowly, catchy monkey” approach. Start small, stat by letting Users store their notes in there, keeping their profile up to date having access to information relevant to them. You have to make it “sticky’; something they wart to come back to.

By: Nick Besseling

Nick Besseling — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 01:10:39 +0000

James you’re right on the money with this. The mysite concept is destined for failure within the majority of organisations at this stage of technology (and organisation/user) maturity.

Some organisations DO NOT need or this type of functionality. They just don’t.

These concepts need pragmatisim not vision at the moment.

It continues to be pushed by those with a wow factor or let’s change the world outlook but often without actually adressing a clear user or business need.

That’s not to say the concept can’t work or won’t be everpresent in a few years time. And yes some organisations have had fantastic results with it but as we all know different organisations and have very divergent ideas and needs.

As other commentators have noted starting off small with some sort of homepage/link/content personalisation and focused collaboration functionality is a good move as it introduces the concepts that many users are coming across outside of work but focuses them on specific (and often measurable) outcomes.

By: James Robertson

James Robertson — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 06:13:53 +0000

This is all very encouraging! It’s great to see that we’re moving beyond naive attempts to create “internal Facebook” solutions, to a range of practical approaches that try different ways of achieving the same underlying goals…

By: Simon Goh

Simon Goh — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:18:50 +0000

Hi James,

I certainly agree with you on the failure rate, especially the habit is not ingrained within the organisation. I felt that thoroughly when i was revamping a government corporate intranet. That was why I’ve put in a collaborative blog instead that targets a specific area of social interest like Sports. In this setting, staff find peer support when they see each other posting. This may be a change management process that takes time before individual feels comfortable about posting to the ‘world’. ‘My sites’ will come much later.

By: Mike Riversdale

Mike Riversdale — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:11:43 +0000

I agree with you if the premise of a “my site” is to be a place that the users “customise/personalise” – it’s unlikely to happen (5-10% do and therefore 90-95% don’t is the figure I use as well).

However if it’s “merely” the “homepage” of an “intranet” (warning, maximum use of speechmarks breeched) that (cleverly) is used to bring more relevant information based on that person (role, project they’re in, org structure etc etc) then it will be a start.

What I suggest to orgs is that they don’t push the concept of each and eveyone having a “my site” but that it is actually just an “intranet” homepage that (cleverly) knows something about you and adjust accordingly.

Those that discover they can custmise/personalise (the 5-10%) then feel they’ve discovered something extra and are happy as Larry.

(this is based on Sharepoint, a subtly different argument occurs on products that use iGoogle/Netvibes as their inspiration)

What I squash asap is, “We’ll have our own internal Facebook” … no, they won’t.