A Matter Of Degree

Managing IT Project Requests with SharePoint 2010 and Project Server

 
Detail of "Rush Hour!" by rovingmagpie on Flickr.

If you use SharePoint to corral incoming project requests to your IT department, you should check out the Project Server-based request management and evaluation system created for Microsoft by Scott Jamison and the folks at Jornata.  I had an opportunity to get a preview of the solution back in March, and it answers many of the issues I've seen my clients and colleagues have in terms of tracking and prioritizing application requests.  One of the features I like best about the system is that it enables users to assign Strategic Impact to each request (often left behind when Who's Screaming Loudest - I mean, Priority - is the main evaluation category).  While Project Server may not be within the scope of all IT departments, I still recommend a review of this solution for its mature approach to project tracking.

The system was released this past month at TechEd, and Scott will present it at SPTechCon Boston this week. 

For more information, you can:

Download the solution and installation guide from the MS Download Center

Watch the recording from TechEd

Read the announcements from Scott and the MS Project Server Team

 

SPTechCon Boston - Session Mapping to the SharePoint Maturity Model

SPTechCon Boston kicks off a week from tomorrow!  If you're wondering which of the 94 technical classes to attend on Thursday and Friday, you might want to take a look at my mapping of all the sessions to the SharePoint Maturity Model:

• Session mapping for Thursday 6/2
• Session mapping for Friday 6/3

Session placement in the matrix is less about the complexity of the solutions or the technical-difficulty level of the talks, and more about where a SharePoint implementation owner would be starting to look at the concept(s) as the next step in improving / maturing their SP environment. 

Some of the sessions are out of the scope of the current version of the Model (which does not (yet) include branding, regulatory issues, public-facing internet sites / WCM, and Being A SharePoint Rockstar In The Community At Large (shoutout to @gvaro & @buckleyplanet - that's going to be a really fun session), but I plugged them into the places where I thought an attendee would get the most benefit as they're considering the basic competencies.

Speakers, as always, feel free to give me some feedback on how your sessions are mapped!

SharePointMaturity.com is live!

I am thrilled to announce that sharepointmaturity.com is live!  For anyone interested in improving their SharePoint implementation's maturity, and for the vendors and consultants who would like to use this model in their work, this is your source for tools and templates, licensing, upcoming events, and the means to send feedback and contact me about the Model. 

Although it's a public-facing website living in the Cloud, two areas not currently covered by the Model, Marc Anderson suggested I evaluate the site's maturity at launch.  Only too happy to do that!

• Publication: 200.  I'm making good use of SP lists and I have the metadata filled out fairly well, with some custom fields to organize the data.
• Collaboration:  100 (truly 0 as there is no way for anonymous users to contribute at this point).
• Business process:  100 (again, pretty much 0)
• Search:  100.  Totally out of box.
• People & Communities: 100. (essentially 0)
• Composites & Applications:  100. (0)
• Insight 100. (0)
• Integration 100. (0)
• Infrastructure - 299.  This is where the need for a true Cloud model comes in.  It's probably even a higher number than that, but it's not really fair to judge against the criteria for an on-premise implementation.
• Staffing & Training: 199 - I'm a staff of one (but I'm pretty well trained!).
• Customization: 100.  I'm editing directly in Production.

 
 So there you have it.  I expect to see these numbers improve as I add functionality to the site.  And this exercise totally reiterated the need for a Cloud version of the Model.

Big thanks to the folks at FPWeb for hosting the site, to Mark Miller for his continual support, and to Marc Anderson for custom design elements on the site, resolution of technical issues, and great suggestions and positive thinking during the past days leading up to launch!  Also - shoutout to Christophe, creator of Easy Tabs, which let me fit all my home page content above the fold.

I welcome your comments about the site and the Model; they are both in a process of continual improvement.  I've already received some feedback from my daughter:  “Maybe you should put games on it!”  Noted.