Nažalost, 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, posebno vrijeme za osoblje konzultanata poput mene (as opposed to independents who must normally live in perpetual fear of in-between time 🙂 ). We staff consultants fill this time in various ways: Rad s prodajnom folk pisati prijedloge; popunjavanjem za nekoga ili backup osobu na ovaj ili onaj posao ak; studying; Blogging :). It’s hard to plan more than a few days in advance. At times like this, dok imam malo vremena na mojim rukama, 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. Još, jedete ručak s klijentom, izvadite ih na večeru i / ili pića, kupiti kolačiće za momčad, ići na kavu staze, dati / primati odmor kartice — 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. S druge strane, you’re a baby. On day zero, savjetnici ne znaju imena, the places or the client’s lingo. Most times, konzultanti nikada naučiti ga sve.

Kada stvari idu dobro, 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, ne shvaćajući što se to radi.

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, vladavina, taksonomija, Osnovne vrste sadržaja, itd.. te u mnogim aspektima, iznosi dugotrajan, 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, provedbi BDC veze s PeopleSoft, uveden prilično složen tijek rada s SharePoint Designer, touched on basic KPI’s and more. A proper phase two would extend all of that with extensive, Gotovo prožima BDC, jako lijepo rada, fino i bolje pretraživanje, zapisi centar, Excel Services i vjerojatno najvažniji, reaching out to other business units. Ali, to ne bi bilo za mene, and that’s sad.

Na temelju ovog nedavnog iskustva, 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, naravno.

That’s the consultant’s life and all of these little complaints are even worse in a SharePoint engagement. Kao što sam napisao prije, 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, možete vidjeti toliko mnogo načina da se SharePoint može pomoći tvrtka postati učinkovitiji, uštedjeti vrijeme, raditi stvari bolje… but you don’t always get to do them.

Često sam se osvrnuti na moj prvi posao izvan koledž, 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, međutim, 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! 🙂

Unatoč mojim melankoličnim raspoloženjem, Ja ne mogu zamisliti mjesto gdje bih radije bio (osim na toploj plaži s dragocjenostima opskrbu duhova).

Ja ne mogu čekati da biste započeli provoditi narednih Enterprise SharePoint projekt.

(Apropos ničega, Napisala sam većinu ovog bloga stupanja na NJ Transit bus. I don’t think I made any friends, but one CAN blog on the bus 🙂 )

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