SharePoint User Group UK

I'm involved in looking into Moss as a platform for a new [replacement] enterprise-level line of business system. (quite a title I know!)

It goes without saying that good analysis, planning & design will generally produce good results (even on a platform with less credentials than Moss) However as we all know in the real world of timescales and budgets, learning curves etc.. quite often good design patterns and practice goes by the way and we end up putting something together 'the best we can'..

Although Moss is certainly highly customisable with lots 'out-the-box', how likely is it to get in a real mess? I mean without relatively expensive consultancy, and real experience on the team?

Microsoft advises to 'determine your approach':  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263463.aspx. This boils down to how much and in what way you 'customize'... surely we need to be be wary of over customising things? Fully customising something is more like bespoke development anyway: nearly always hampered on large platforms by the way the platform dictates things. Better to go with a more flexible lower level platform like .Net itself?

I don't want to be 'customizing' a car to make a caravan because the car had wheels 'already' which will 'save time'. Oh dear..

Experiences, thoughts?

Thanks

 

Hi,

I guess there are going to be several points of view on this one!

One of the first fallacies I try to dispell about MOSS on any consulting job is that there isn't really any such thing as "out of the box". In fact, the sooner you forget that idea, the sooner you can get on with delivering what the business actually wants rather than trying to mould a business process around a pre-configured suite of applications.

I grant you that MOSS has a lot pre configured and if this all works for you, then it's fine and dandy (and you can count yourself unique in the World) but the reality is that on every single implementation I've been involved in (thats lots btw), everyone wants something that either needs customisation of design, the site columns, the logic or custom controls, etc. What I 'm saying is that you can't just run the installation wizard and walk away from it, job done so to speak.

You're entirely correct though, in the real world with enforced budgets, time constraints and a steep learning curve, sometimes the only option is to just "get on with it" and do the best you can. Sharepoint has matured over the years and so it does provide a lot of functionality that would take years to develop on your own. One of the best ways to see it is to break it down to it's components and see it as buying a package of components that work together rather than a finished application like Word or Photoshop, etc

There is good news though, there are lots of user customisation options within MOSS that make it simple to use and relatievly pain free. Not everything needs to be done by a developer or a consultant, most anyone with application configuration experience can get to grips with MOSS and get appreciable results in a relatively short time frame. Of course, with consultants, architects and dedicated MOSS developers there comes a deeper level of understanding that you can't hope to master as a novice (I certainly mean no offence here, I drive a car every day but wouldn't have a clue how to change a clutch but I bet you I could work it out given enough time and googling!).

So my advice would be to at least engage a consultant to get you going and point you on the right track. If you're savvy enough to know that you don't want the car derived caravan, you're half way there.

 

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Paul Leigh
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Software Architect and a QuikR Microlight pilot in my spare time.

many thanks, great reply!

Maybe I'll put this in conext a little: I'm a .Net developer, who's been using MOSS for a few weeks. I'm a quick learner & I understand the platform well already.. I guess my main concern using MOSS is that it's effectively a layer on top of ASP.Net which will help greatly in many cases but has the potential to hinder greatly.. Let me give an example:

Over the years I've been involved some of 'Office' development.. the likes of Word, Excel & Visio integrations into business apps. What you often find is that although you are able to leverage a lot of great stuff which you would never attempt from scratch, there are some things that you just can't do with the platform- or worse: things that 'half' work and introduce bugs or holes in your system you have no control over. Sometimes this can occur a long way into a project - impossible in many cases to anticipate. The 'black-box' syndrome.. (It's not just 'Office' development I've seen this sort of thing in)

My point is that if you end up doing loads of work to sort out little niggly issues in this way doesn't that outweigh any time saving benefits? As I say above sometimes integrating something like Visio is a 'no-brainer' - there is no way you'd want to re-invent the drawing capabilities. However I wonder if it's the same for Moss in a small to medium enterprise?

There's not much there that I haven't already got... I've been developing n-tier ASP.Net business apps for many years.. Nowadays I (& the team I currently work with) can go from business requirements to UAT quite quickly using established patterns, practices, libraries, code generation etc.. In the end this very flexible and there's little 'black-box' about it (apart from the .Net framework itself maybe)

I read the Microsoft white paper on their own installation.. 14TB in storage! Now in that sort of enterprise you're going to want to use MOSS just for the scale of things and also because they'll have the skills on hand. I just don't see the benefits of Moss yet to a SME who either need to retrain developers or buy in consultancy.

I'm not knocking the platform or the consultants (after all it's going to find it's way onto my CV as well, so I guess there's a possiblity I'll go down this route with susequent contracts..).

Just probing it's real usefulness in SME land.

(BTW: why is the UK sharepoint user group website hosted on community server? Shouldn't there be a showcase here...?!)

maybe it's reading the likes of this that get's me worried!: http://suguk.org/forums/thread/8954.aspx

;)