SharePoint is now used in many organization by many different types of people. We have developers customizing it, Power Users doing some wonderful things in SharePoint designer as well as PM’s, BA’s, Admins, Architects all doing their thing on a daily basis with it. All have wonderful tales to tell!
So, my question this week is based around the journey you have taken with SharePoint. Answers can be 1 liners or 20 paragraphs and could include some (or all) of the following! However, you have a free rein to to tell us your full story! Be creative! (Videos, photos will get extra points).
Suggestions :
- How long you have been using SharePoint ?
- Where have you worked – what type of organizations ?
- Are you certified ?
- Favourite project ?
- Key influencers
- What has your role been ?
Win-an-eBook Wednesdays is a small three day contest that we hold every week. The Prize? An O’reilly eBook for your choice! Furthermore, if you win, you also get the chance to ask the community whatever question you want and be the judge for next week’s contest!
You have until Sunday, June 17th (10pm GMT) to answer this question!
My story is relatively simple. I was working as new Networking Team member (Systems analyst with about 6 years It background) for a large food manufacturing company. My boss walked up to me with a Orange disk and said “There is this SharePoint Portal Server 2003 thing, it sounds cool, you want to install this and see what it does?”, I said “Sure”.
I had then installed it and a week later talked to my boss again who informed me the board of dirctory and executives have seen a presentation on some of the stuff it can do, they would like a Dashboard and we think the project should take about 1 month total. We were off to the races.
The scope grew, teams were formed, training was done, research (more like reverse engineering from the database side in those days) was done. Missed all deadlines, was over budget and spent more time trying to learn on the fly.
Eventually we deployed the product and the key items were a company portal complete with branding, new articles, etc. Dashboards using BI (SSAS) and MySites for 5 targetted executive and a custom search scope that indexed and surfaced the Help Desk ticketting system.
Shortly after that I ended up leaving that company and while in between jobs, I was installing SharePoint 2007Â on home laptops. It was in my blood, it was what I do. I then connected with my current company and have focused 100% on SharePoint. I have worked with hundreds of clients and met thousands of SharePoint enthusiasts.
Of course as soon as I think I have seen all that there is, I walk into a client and say “Wow, I never thought of doing that… how about…” and we are off to the races again.
My story is one of reinvention!
My background is in finance – I qualified through CIMA back in 1994 and spent my first 15 working years analysing the financial performance of companies such as Allied Breweries, Asda and Farnell. During this time I also started a family and struggled to find a suitable ‘work / life’ balance – my beautiful girls wanted more of my time, but I also needed some intellectual challenges. Time for a change!
I have to admit that the break was fabulous and we all benefitted, but I soon realised that I was not destined to be a domestic goddess – daytime TV is truly awful and cleaning during school hours even worse! I missed working. So – back to the drawing board.
My next move was obvious, my husbands company had just finished developing their new software product and needed help – the only stumbling block was that it was built to compliment SharePoint and I had no experience! So my SharePoint journey began by receiving a product demonstration and I learnt about all the parts of SharePoint that were required to use DocRead. To prove that I had ‘got it’ I created user guides and training videos to explain to others how to do the same – my theory being that as a beginner I would not overlook something important and show a user every step of the way. OK they go into a lot of detail – but there is no point creating a guide that omits important stuff, that just frustrates you (we’ve all been there with guides that tell you how to get from A to D but forget about the middle stages of B and C – it is not fun). I’m really proud of them and often get great feedback about how easy they are to follow. Time well spent in my book.
From there I had no escape – I was hooked! I’ve been involved with the testing of new releases of DocRead and also do product demonstrations in SharePoint 2007 and 2010. I’m looking forward to the new version being created for SharePoint 2013 and a new product DocSurvey which are both due to be released soon – more testing, new user guides and videos to create. So for someone who was looking for a new direction – I certainly found it!
There is still plenty to learn and every day provides a new challenge. Life is certainly not dull!
So for other ‘old dogs’ out there ‘new tricks’ can be conquered – you just have to get out there and do it!
