Will you respect SharePoint in the morning?

I think SharePoint is one of those software applications that has the potential to be a spectacular disappointment - perhaps undeservedly so. Rarely does one hear or read about an organisation that has easily been able to harness it to its best abilities. It always seems to be "just not quite there".

I think there are a couple of points worth discussing and although this post by Bjorn Kuruknap speaks a lot of truth and left me with tears in my eyes I don't think I'll quite take the same hard position.

Firstly anything that sets out to be all things to all people sets out to fail. The maxim for success is "focus" and SharePoint just doesn't have it. It purports to do document management, knowledge management, process management, content management, business intelligence/insight, portals etc but it really doesn't crack it for any of them.

Secondly when you get something for free (thinking the WSS flavour here rather than MOSS) it doesn't earn much respect from you - so it can easily be treated in a casual or dismissive way. Just because the software came for free doesn't mean you can plug it in, switch it on and expect to get happy users and a quality outcome.

The threat of SharePoint is the viral spread of poorly formed and executed team sites and processes that leverage and further entrench the likes of Word and Excel based forms and edge-to-edge thinking in an unmanageable and un-auditable environment. For business it means no better control and little discovery of areas crying out for improvement (no "lightbulb moments"). For IT it means added drain and chaos in support and significant challenges when the time comes for upgrades. For end users it means confusion in where to go to do what and an enforcement of an unnatural place to go to do things (personal note: I live in email and I hate being forced to go to a portal/website to do something - "don't make me go somewhere, just let me do something").

Like any multi user application/framework, you need to understand your requirements, priorities and your desired outcomes. From that you need to consider what is an appropriate approach to addressing your needs and then you need to plan and design how to achieve the best results. All of this entails the hard slog of thinking and communicating, not website development.

With the proper due diligence in place you are in a strong position to start looking at possible solutions. SharePoint may very well be the right answer, or more likely part of the answer. Your due diligence will help you identify its weaknesses and strengths for your specific purposes and help identify if other tools are needed to fill the gaps. But thinking is harder than hard work and most organisations don't apply themselves in a coherent way to the challenge so SharePoint ends up being a spectacular disappointment.