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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Hmm, sounds good but I believe for SharePoint 2013 the word around is “Don’t customize too much”. I am not sure this helps, but as we are going to tough times in market, we can cut costs further by asking the consultant to gather requirements too. 😉
Hi Helen
Yes I deliberately set 3 otherwise it would be too easy!
Ok, here’s my 2 cents:
– Business Analyst
Gets the requirements from the business, obviously.
– SharePoint Consultant
Implements the requirements gathered
– Project manager
Makes sure the requirements are gathered and implemented 🙂
And some clarification why you don’t need the others:
– SharePoint Administrator
Use Office 365 or some other cloud service when you’re staying inside the box. The SharePoint consultant should be able to handle the administrative side of O365.
– SQL Administrator
Not needed in the cloud.
– SharePoint Developer
Stick to the out of the box stuff for initial implementation. In my opinion, custom made stuff should be “phase 2” or something like that. Most organizations prefer ootb anyway (feasibility is a different cookie). Apps will help adding functionality where needed; and a consultant can handle apps as long as you don’t need to create them.
– Web Developer
Tricky one, since it’s a marketing company and they probably won’t like the default styling. But hey, choices have to be made and usually a consultant is able to fiddle around with masterpages as well, for simple alterations.
– Architect
The really tricky one because I’m ruling myself out here. But still, for a site collection on Office 365 with clicked together ootb functionality; an architect is probably overkill. Depends on the skills of the consultant I guess, sometimes there’s a thin line between them and sometimes the line is, well… thicker.
So this is based on your basic intranet with mostly OOTB functionality. In my opinion, usually a good point to start from and worry about customizations in a later stage. I’m always suprised by companies with tons of customizations whilst using only 10-20% of the ootb features.
Here it goes! It is always nice to have people in abundance in any project but we have to work with what has been given. I will hire a SharePoint Consultant to do requirement/business analysis, architecture and development (OOTB & Custom). SharePoint Admin for taking care of the environment setup (AD/ Web front end, app server and SQL) and maintenance. Probably a Project Manger/Designer with design experience to make it look slick and glossy, also to make sure we stick to the timelines. Since SharePoint 2013 is dynamic, we can have SharePoint Power users who can help train users and keep it going.
I am sure, these roles can build and deliver an Intranet for Small-Medium organization.
Cheers!
Obviously, the answer is … it depends! However, I am guessing thats why you left it kind of open. For a project that’s “run of the mill” SharePoint, and doesn’t require custom development, I would user :
- Business Analyst … talk to the business and find out exactly what they want. This person can also double up as a tester and trainer!
- SharePoint Administrator … build the platform and plumb the workings of SharePoint
- SharePoint Developer (heavy on OOB or third party tools) … This assumes that some front end development is needed.
I am not sure you could do the project without these 3 ? Maybe the question would be better with 4 ?
