Desafortunadamente, phase one of my last project has come to a close and the client has opted to move ahead by themselves on phase two. We did our job too well, as usual 🙂 I’m now between projects, un momento especial para consultores persoal como eu (as opposed to independents who must normally live in perpetual fear of in-between time 🙂 ). We staff consultants fill this time in various ways: Working with sales folk to write proposals; filling in for someone or backing up a person on this or that odd job; studying; Blogs :). It’s hard to plan more than a few days in advance. At times like this, while I have a bit of time on my hands, I like to reflect.
I’m almost always sad to leave a client’s campus for the last time. We consultants form a peculiar kind of relationship with our clients, unlike your typical co-worker relationship. There’s the money angle — everyone knows the consultant’s rate is double/triple or even more than the client staff. You’re a known temporary person. As a consultant, you’re a permanent outsider with a more or less known departure date. Aínda, you eat lunch with the client, take them out to dinner and/or for drinks, buy cookies for the team, go on coffee runs, give/receive holiday cards — all the kinds of things that co-workers do. On one hand, you’re the adult in the room. You’re an expert in the technology which puts you in a superior position. Por outra banda, you’re a baby. On day zero, consultants don’t know the names, the places or the client’s lingo. Most times, consultants never learn it all.
Cando as cousas van ben, you become very well integrated with the client’s project team. They treat you like a co-worker in one sense, and confidant in another. Since we don’t have a manager-style reporting relationship with the client, the project team often feels a little free to air their dirty laundry. They let their barriers down and can put the consultant into an awkward position, nunca entender que eles están a facer iso.
Consultants often don’t get to implement phase two and that never gets easy for me. I think this is especially hard with SharePoint. Phase one of of your typical SharePoint project covers setup/configuration, Goberno, taxonomía, básicas de tipos de contido, etc. e en moitos aspectos, elévase a unha longa, extremely detailed discovery. That’s how I view my last project. We did all the basic stuff as well as execute some nice mini-POC’s by extending CQWP, implementación de conexións BDC para PeopleSoft, introduciu un fluxo de traballo moi complexo co SharePoint Deseño, touched on basic KPI’s and more. A proper phase two would extend all of that with extensive, case xeneralizada BDC, moi bo fluxo de traballo, ben afinado e busca mellor, Centro de Rexistros, Servizos de Excel e, probablemente, máis importante, reaching out to other business units. Pero, non é ser para min, and that’s sad.
Con base nesa experiencia recente, I think it’s fair to say that a proper enterprise SharePoint implementation is a one year process. It could probably legitimately run two years before reaching a point of diminishing returns. Details matter, claro.
That’s the consultant’s life and all of these little complaints are even worse in a SharePoint engagement. Como xa escribín antes, SharePoint’s horizontal nature brings you into contact with a wide array of people and business units. When you’re working with so many people, you can see so many ways that SharePoint can help the company become more efficient, save time, do things better… but you don’t always get to do them.
I often look back to my first job out of college, before starting a consulting career 1995. We did get to do a phase two and even a phase three. Those were nice times. On the downside, con todo, that means that that would mean a lot of routine stuff too. Managing site security. Tweaking content types. Creating views and changing views. Dealing with IE security settings. Restoring lost documents. Blech! 🙂
Despite my melancholy mood, I can’t imagine a place I’d rather be (except at a warm beach with a goodly supply of spirits).
I can’t wait to get started implemented the next enterprise SharePoint project.
(Apropos of nothing, I wrote most of this blog entry on an NJ Transit bus. I don’t think I made any friends, but one CAN blog on the bus 🙂 )
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