How to create successful SharePoint intranets (presentation)
Filed under: Conferences & presentations, Intranets, SharePoint
We’ve just had the pleasure of participating in both the Australian and New Zealand SharePoint conferences, organised by Share The Point. These events covered a huge spectrum of SharePoint topics, from business-focused to highly technical.
For my part, I presented on “How to create a successful SharePoint intranet”, which shared the pragmatic experiences we’ve gained across hundreds of intranet projects.
Some of the key points:
- While the possibilities offered by SharePoint are endless, there are still many questions to be answered when conducting a SharePoint intranet project.
- Be guided by four practical principles:
1. Have a clear plan for success
2. Reduce uncertainties early
3. Make sure it will work for staff
4. Extract the full benefits
- Funnel down to the right solution, by focusing on activities that take the project from a vague idea to a concrete plan.
- This includes understanding staff needs, developing a strategy, defining the project scope, designing the new intranet, and then selecting the right partner.
- The five purposes of intranets provides a useful framework for project scoping, as does using the 6×2 methodology to create a simple “intranet concept“.
- The work isn’t over once the coding has been finished — launch and governance activities are equally important.
- Getting a clear shape around a project doesn’t have to involve a huge amount of work; just a few weeks of effort (or less) will answer all the key questions.
- If you funnel down from a vague idea to a concrete plan, you can build with confidence.