You have 6 months to design, build and deliver an Intranet based on SharePoint 2013 for a dynamic marketing company. You can only employ three people. Which three would you  choose from the list below, and why ? You may give several answers, for different assumptions 🙂
- SharePoint Architect
- SharePoint Consultant
- Project Manager
- Business Analyst
- SharePoint Developer (Heavy on code)
- SharePoint Developer (Heavy on OOTB or third party tools)
- SharePoint Administrator
- Web Developer heavy on Javascript, CSS, graphics design
- SQL Administrator
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The answer here for others would vary depending..
Don’t have SharePoint – But I want it!:
1. Business Analyst – You will need someone to get requirements formally from your users and be able to document these for justification. Also will gather requirements around how SharePoint will be used after it is installed and running.
2. SharePoint Consultant – You will need a consultant to come in and provide the expertise and knowledge around SharePoint which your company does not have. Typcially on ventures like this an outside resource is considered the standards on which your company will build and rely on SharePoint. This will be your Infrastructure Architect for SharePoint — in consulting form.
3. SharePoint Administrator – this is the guy who is going to build the hardware, install sharepoint, and get it all configured to run everything OOTB that you want.
You Have SharePoint installed – now what?:
Well now we have this thing, what do we do with it!
1. Project Manager – take requirements gathered by BA initially and start building out the plan to implement OOTB functionality to make the system usefull for users.
2. SharePoint Developer – (Heavy on OOTB or third party tools): Someone to start building out against the project plan.
3. SharePoint Architect: You need someone to think about the future, built it right now, built it as close to best-practice as possible, and maybe you’ll be lucky not to have a huge mess in a year from now!
We have this thing called SharePoint, we need to keep the lights on:
1. SharePoint Administrator: Ensure the system runs.
2. SQL Administrator: Ensure databases are tuned, run DBCC CheckDB, etc. etc.
3. SharePoint Architect: Ensure that what’s being created in sharepoint isn’t going to create issues.
Okay so users are using it – But we need more! (AND we’re running 2010)
So you have other LOBs that you need to connect, or provide functionality above OOTB features
1. Business Analyst: Get requirements from users and technical groups.
2. Web Developer: Duh! He’s going to make an App for that.
3. Project Manager: need someone to make sure things are going well and keep people of the dev’s back.
Okay so users are using it – But we need more! (AND we’re running 2013)
So you have other LOBs that you need to connect, or provide functionality above OOTB features
1. Business Analyst: Get requirements from users and technical groups.
2. SharePoint Developer (Heavy on code): Duh! he’s going to build it.
3. Project Manager: need someone to make sure things are going well and keep people of the dev’s back.
In General, if I had to only have three people on a team to handle a SharePoint install:
1. SharePoint Administrator: Guy to make sure things are built / running right.
2. SharePoint Developer (Heavy on OOTB – third party): We don’t have the staff to build highly customized solutions, therefore there’s going to be a higher cost to provide functionality by using third party tools. We have to get the most bang for the buck out of OOTB.
3. SharePoint Consultant: I would swap out roles from a consulting company on this person. Sure the cost is higher, however having the ability to switch a person’s role at the whim, is needed. I would use a SQL DBA for maintenence every quarter. I would use a SharePoint Developer (Code) if / when we needed something – as project work like that is always easy to farm out. And potentially a Web developer should I need branding. As I move to 2013 – I would bring in the Web Developer more to build out Apps for 2013. I would not change anything else.
