491 SharePoint 2010 for Project Management, 2nd Edition

SECOND EDITION

  

SharePoint 2010 for Project

Management Dux Raymond Sy

  SharePoint 2010 for Project Management, Second Edition by Dux Raymond Sy Copyright © 2012 Innovative-e, Inc. All rights reserved.

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  ISBN: 978-1-449-30637-3 [LSI]

Table of Contents

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Preface

  Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinangalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan. (He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination.)

  —Dr. José P. Rizal, Philippine national hero

  Do you find yourself asking for more time whenever you work on a project? Do you ever get the extra time you asked for? Well, if you’re like me, you rarely get the extra time you need from your customers. This got me thinking about how I can buy more time for my projects.

  I decided to find out if I could gain more time by reducing inefficiencies within the project team (which also includes myself). In a recent project, I monitored and analyzed a few individuals for a week and was amazed at what I discovered. During an average eight-hour workday, each individual spent about 45 minutes looking for information. For example, when asked by a client to retrieve a specific status report, the project coordinator had to look for it on the network share, in her email inbox, in the project folder of her computer, and she even had to call up another colleague to help her find it. This typical mode of searching took up time that could have been spent on something more productive. In addition, project resources were unproductive due to poor document management practices, inefficient project communication stand- ards, and ineffective project collaboration tools. According to a May 31, 2007, New

  

York Times article, “Time Wasted? Perhaps It’s Well Spent”

a Microsoft study found that American workers, on

  average, spend 45 hours a week at work, with 16 of these hours described as “unproductive.” Although 45 minutes may not sound like a lot, when you look at the bigger picture, it essentially means that a team of 20 people wastes 900 minutes a day. In a three-month project, that is 54,000 minutes, or roughly 38 personal days—more than one-third of the project!

  Other than time, how much does this cost the project and the organization? Well, depending on who you’re considering, 45 minutes might cost $50 for a project coor- dinator or $250 for a technical contractor, each day. Bottom line: time and money are not well spent. What if my team could regain just 20 of those 45 minutes wasted each day? With SharePoint, we achieved this and more. Apart from increasing productivity, we were able to:

• Automate status reporting for stakeholders
• Use collaboration to generate real-time project lessons learned that were easily accessible by a globally dispersed team
• Synchronize standard project information such as calendars, contacts, and documents
• Document and track project risks and issues
• Maintain a quality log
• Integrate existing project management tools such as email, Microsoft Word, Excel, and Project into SharePoint
• Create and manage a change control system For me, the best part of using SharePoint was that once the IT/IS department performed the installation and initial configuration, I didn’t have to burden anybody to set up and further configure this unique Project Management Information System (PMIS)—I did it all myself. In addition, I was still able to better use existing tools like Microsoft Office along with SharePoint. That’s what this book is all about. By clearly mapping the relationships between project management processes and project stakeholders, and by leveraging tools like Share- Point, you will learn how to apply common and practical project management techni- ques using SharePoint. More importantly, with this book you will quickly master SharePoint so you can build a PMIS that can help you efficiently coordinate commu- nication and collaboration throughout your project team.

Who Should Read This Book

  This book will be most valuable to individuals working on projects who want to adapt SharePoint for project management, including:

  Project managers

  By managing a project officially or unofficially, project managers are involved from the project’s inception to its closure. Their responsibilities include project plan- ning, executing, monitoring, controlling, and closing. In addition, they lead a project team and are the project liaison with key stakeholders.

  Project team members

  Members of the team work in a project environment that requires participating in collaborative activities, such as project planning, status updates, risk monitoring, tracking, requesting changes, and maintaining critical project information.

  Program managers

  Program managers seek a standard, consistent, and best-practices approach to im- plementing a PMIS across projects in the organization.

  IT/IS directors

  Directors want to learn how SharePoint can meet the needs of project managers in the organization.

  SharePoint consultants

  SharePoint consultants can help you to leverage your SharePoint technical skills by offering a focused approach in implementing SharePoint as a PMIS.

What You Need to Best Use This Book

  To maximize the benefits of this book, familiarity with basic project management con- cepts and terminologies is assumed. This book is intended for individuals with a project management background who are interested in leveraging SharePoint on their projects. Furthermore, it is ideal that you have an existing SharePoint environment (SharePoint Foundation or SharePoint Server) where you can practice and apply the techniques that you will learn. If you are not sure about this, ask your IT/IS department these two questions:

• Am I a member of an existing SharePoint site?
• Am I allowed to create SharePoint subsites? If the answer to both questions is yes, you are in good shape. If the answer to either or both questions is no, I suggest you ask for appropriate SharePoint access or rely on for more details. Finally, apart from having a SharePoint environment to work in, your computer must be running Windows (XP or above versions), and it must have Internet Explorer 8 and Microsoft Office installed. Certain sections of this book showcase the integration of Microsoft Office products with SharePoint. All of the examples in the book were created

  using Microsoft Office 2010.

My Assumptions in Writing This Book

  My assumptions are that you:

  Have some sort of project management experience

  You have managed projects formally or informally and are familiar with funda- mental project management concepts and practices.

  Are new to SharePoint

  You may have heard of SharePoint or have been told to use SharePoint to manage your projects. If you have used SharePoint before, you will gain practical knowledge in applying SharePoint for project management.

  Are using SharePoint for project management purposes

  This book is focused on helping you leverage SharePoint for project management, regardless of what industry you are in. The concepts and techniques in this book apply to IT, construction, government, education, finance, and healthcare projects. If you are interested in using SharePoint to deploy a corporate portal, create an ecommerce website, or develop a proprietary SharePoint application, this is not the book for you.

  Are not interested in the nitty-gritty technical details of SharePoint

  I am not inclined to write yet another technical book about SharePoint. Though I am a certified SharePoint geek, there are tons of other books available that do a great job of discussing advanced technical topics. The level of technical detail I will cover is just enough for you to get your PMIS up and running.

  Are comfortable using Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, and a web browser

  The technical background required to fully utilize SharePoint is minimal. As long as you are familiar with basic computing concepts—such as creating and saving documents, copying files, logging in and logging out, using passwords, surfing the Web, clicking on links on a web page, downloading and uploading, and distin- guishing files versus folders—you are in good shape.

  Are willing to change and try something new

  Remember, to benefit from this book, you have to consciously decide that how you manage project information, facilitate team collaboration, and enable project communication must change for the better.

Additional Resources

  Websites:

• PRINCE2 ( )
• )
• All the Top SharePoint News (

• Microsoft Project for the Masses: FREE Resource Management Solution (

   )

  Books:

  by Scott Berkun (O’Reilly, •

  2008)

• Applied Project Management: Best Practices on Implementation by Harold Kerzner (Wiley, 1999)
• Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Plain & Simple by Jonathan Lightfoot and Chris Beckett (Microsoft Press, 2010)

Contents of This Book

  This book includes hands-on workshops, which will help you leverage a SharePoint PMIS just as you would in a typical project environment. And using each chapter’s detailed, step-by-step logical processes, you will integrate project management best practices and standards to fully reap the benefits of a SharePoint PMIS.

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Acknowledgments

  It’s been an amazing ride since the first edition of SharePoint for Project Management was published. SharePoint has exploded in the enterprise; in a recent report from AIIM, project management is the top use of SharePoint today ).

  With this second edition, I would like to thank the following for their unwavering support, trust, and patience:

• The Lord God for the awesome plan He has for me, as promised in Jeremiah 29:11
• My wonderful wife, Ramona, and amazing children, Johannes and Danika, for making all this worthwhile
• Team Innovative-e for all the help and insights
• The O’Reilly Media crew for being top-notch as always

• The global SharePoint community for the kindness and hospitality you’ve shown me
• My good friend Dave Murphy for jumping in at the last minute to review

Off You Go

  The last thing I want is for you to think of SharePoint as a burden or a necessary evil, simply because your boss is making you use it for your projects. My hope is that, after reading this book, you will be able to use SharePoint to effectively manage your projects, make them less complicated, and make your team more efficient. Should you have any questions, comments, and/or feedback, feel free to visit . Enjoy!

  to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dan- gerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things.

  —Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian philosopher

  As most of you would agree, the definition of a project varies greatly—it can be building the next space shuttle, upgrading the production line of your manufacturing facility, or just creating a new website for a customer. One common factor that holds true across these varying project types is that all of them involve multiple people interacting with a wide array of project information. This information can include templates, emails, schedules, proposals, forms, budgets, contact information, status reports, regulatory compliance, and even ad hoc docu- ments. In spite of our best attempts to effectively manage project information, we all seem to fall short at times. We rely on inconsistent and inefficient tools that are typically a combination of three things:

  Local/personal storage

  If project information is stored in an individual’s personal computer, email, or portable storage device, can important information—such as a project schedule— be made available to relevant stakeholders in a timely manner? If the computer or portable storage device breaks down, how is the information restored?

  Network-based storage

  If you are using central storage through a file-sharing network or web-based envi- ronment, how do you prevent files from being overwritten? What are the standards for maintaining versions? Can you easily define who can access what information?

  Mixed bag of project management tools

  Some common tools used in project environments are Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and possibly Microsoft Project. In certain cases, complex enterprise tools such as Microsoft Project Server and Primavera are also made available.

Checklist: Essential Project Management Activities

  

When I formally started managing projects more than 15 years ago, I had the wrong

impression that the very first step to take was to fire up a scheduling tool (such as

Microsoft Project) and start cranking out the project tasks, defining the task duration,

and establishing the task dependencies. It never really worked out well for me. Only

later did I realize that there are other crucial steps I failed to do.

Here’s my essential list of project management activities that every project manager

should be doing throughout the life of a project:

• Create guidelines for how your projects will be initiated
• Run a kickoff meeting to define project objectives
• Identify your stakeholders
• Identify project information taxonomy

• • Plan your projects with your team, including creating the work breakdown struc-

  ture (WBS), creating the network diagram, identifying the critical path, and opti- mizing the project schedule
• Define the probability and impact of project risks
• Create a change control process for scope changes
• Define quantifiable project-tracking processes
• Facilitate a lessons-learned meeting

  To improve these inefficiencies, three things are necessary:

  

Apply a standard set of project management processes from the start of the project until

the end

  While I won’t go into detailed discussions on project management concepts and theories, I will say that to make SharePoint work to your advantage, you have to employ sound project management techniques and practices. If you don’t have one, the best way to develop a project management methodology is to review best practices from the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Project

  Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide and the Projects in Controlled Environments (PRINCE2) road map.

  Consider this example: I have no cooking experience, so if I were to compete in a cooking contest against the best chef in the world (à la Iron Chef), I would definitely lose. This is because even if, by chance, I cooked really well, there’s no method to my madness—I dislike reading recipe books, so it’s hit or miss. I am certain that a veteran chef would have proven processes in place, from how to chop the vegeta- bles to how long okra should simmer. Not only do veteran chefs document these steps, they also constantly tweak their processes for improvement. Guess what? The same thing applies to project management.

  

Use a Project Management Information System (PMIS) to support your project manage-

ment processes

  As any experienced project manager would validate, having an easy-to-use, accessible, reliable, and scalable collaborative platform can contribute greatly to a project’s success. That’s the crux of what you will learn in this book: using Share- Point as your PMIS.

  Educate and update your project team with project management best practices

  Having an incremental approach to continuous process improvement will enable the project team to make better use of the PMIS.

  

Dux Quax: Is It Changeworthy?

Listen, before you go gung-ho and start implementing formalized project management

processes in your organization, slow down, my good friend. I guarantee that it won’t

work if you change the rules overnight. People, by nature, are averse to change (as you

might already know). As the old adage goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

So, what should you do? How can you convince your team that it’s necessary to im-

plement project management processes? Taking baby steps is key:

Make the case that having sound project management processes will greatly improve how

projects are run in the organization

  A good exercise is to examine a previous project that didn’t turn out too well—it might have been delayed or gone over budget. Assess whether you had sound planning processes. Could you have done a better job defining the work and draw- ing up a more realistic schedule and budget?

  Implement new processes one at a time Initially, focus on the planning aspects of project management. Perhaps come up with a standard on defining project goals, identifying stakeholders, prioritizing requirements, generating work breakdown, assigning work, developing a project schedule, and documenting a risk management plan.

  Involve the team Allow the team to provide feedback on the processes that will be implemented.

  Ask if they’re relevant. If not, how can they be improved? Is there anything missing?

What kind of support is necessary to ensure that these processes are adopted?

Remember, people can change as long as they perceive it as worthwhile. They are more

likely to make changes that will bring about benefits at a personal level than at the

organizational level.

To get you started in developing your project management process, go

for a step-by-step guide, complete with supporting templates, docu-

ments, and references.

What Is a PMIS?

  As defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI; see a

  

Project Management Information System (PMIS) is a standardized set of automated

  project management tools available within an organization and integrated into a sys- tem. Although the PMI does not specify which tools or technologies to use as a PMIS, SharePoint can be customized as one.

Checklist: Essential PMIS Capabilities

  

A reliable PMIS should support most, if not all, of the communication and collaboration

needs of a project environment. Here is a list of essential PMIS capabilities:

• Supports the generation of a project charter, schedule, and budget
• Facilitates communication and feedback
• Monitors project activities
• Controls project changes
• Analyzes and forecasts project performance
• Disseminates project status to relevant stakeholders

• • Provides real-time information essential for initiating, planning, executing, con-

  trolling, and closing a project

Deciding to Use a PMIS

  No matter how small or large a project is, being able to efficiently manage project information whenever, wherever, and however can greatly contribute to project suc- cess. A key requirement for making this possible is leveraging a PMIS. Here are five telltale signs that you need to begin using a PMIS:

  No standardized system for integrating project goals

  Project schedule, cost, and quality objectives are individual silos. For example, financial information in Excel is not automatically recalculated anytime the project schedule is adjusted using scheduling tools such as Microsoft Project. Making manual updates takes time away from other project activities.

  Inefficient document management

  Project documents are not stored in a central location. Tracking, undoing changes, and the ability to roll back to prior versions are limited. Additionally, varying levels of access permissions are unavailable. IT/IS can only do so much in supporting information access requirements.

  Lack of appropriate tools to facilitate team collaboration

  Project information is not accessible anytime, anywhere. In addition, the team is incapable of developing or working with information at the same time.

  Inability to report accurate and timely status of the project

  Project status information is available only when the project manager makes it available. How do you deal with project sponsors who want to view real-time project status data?

  Not achieving organizational strategic goals

  Lacking a standardized tool to facilitate consistent project management processes throughout an organization can limit the ability to effectively support strategic goals. As a project manager, these five issues can more than justify the need for any organi- zation to invest in a reliable, effective, customizable, and easy-to-implement PMIS.

  Today, multiple PMIS solutions are available. However, in addition to being costly, they can require specialized skills to implement, customize, and maintain. That’s why a lot of these initiatives have achieved only limited adoption. This is how SharePoint sets itself apart.

What Is SharePoint?

  How do people describe SharePoint? In my experience, the definition always gets lost somewhere between collaboration and document management. Here’s a concise and straightforward description of SharePoint:

  

SharePoint allows individuals in an organization to easily create and manage their own

collaborative solutions.

  It sounds simple, but let me dissect what it truly means:

  Individuals

  Does this word specify that SharePoint users have to be technically savvy? No. In fact, as long as users have familiarity with Windows, Microsoft Office, and surfing the Web, they will be in good shape.

  Organization

  This term implies that SharePoint can be used by a limited number of people be- longing to the same group. It also means that there will be varying levels of authority and privileges within the group. As a result, you don’t have to rely on the IT/ IS department to set up permissions in SharePoint—you are empowered to define and manage access to specific information. You will learn more about permissions in

  collaborative tool. Although IT/IS will not be totally out of the picture, SharePoint empowers users to develop a customized automated solution that can appropri- ately support their needs in a timely manner.

  Collaborative

  The intent of SharePoint is to support collaborative activities (formal or informal) in which groups engage. SharePoint has been around since 2001. It has evolved from a simple website manage- ment tool to an empowering collaboration platform that integrates seamlessly with the Web, Microsoft Windows, and Microsoft Office. Since it is a foundational Microsoft technology, various organizations—including government institutions, airlines, banks, construction companies, and retail industries—have benefited from its tools and fea- ture sets. SharePoint does not refer to a specific product or technology. Using the phrase “Mi- crosoft SharePoint” is like using the phrase “Microsoft Office.” It refers to several as- pects of collaborative solutions. The key components are SharePoint Foundation (SF) and SharePoint Server (SS). To distinguish SF and SS, an analogy that I often use is to compare SharePoint to a car. What’s the main purpose of a car? To take you from point A to point B, agreed? Which component of a car is required to do this? The engine, of course. The main purpose of SharePoint is to empower users with document management and team collaboration tools. SF fulfills this purpose. It is the core “engine” of SharePoint. Without SF, there is no SharePoint. SF (shown is available with Windows 2008 Server or later.

  Figure 1-1. A SharePoint site using a SF site template

  SS provides extended capabilities to SF. Going back to the car analogy, we can equip our vehicles with accessories such as GPS, a DVD system, voice command, etc. How- ever, these extended features are not required to run a car (taking us from point A to point B). If these accessories are not installed, the car will still work. It’s just that having a GPS might enable us to reach our destination faster without getting lost. SS extended features include Enterprise Search, Personalization, Enterprise Content Management, etc. Unlike SF, SS (shown has separate licensing. Licensing can vary and become quite costly. For more information about licensing, visit Microsoft’s SharePoint website at

  Figure 1-2. A SharePoint site using SS features

  Since SharePoint can be considered a platform for improving document management and collaboration, it can be adopted as a tool to assist most project environments. In this book, I will show you how to build a SharePoint PMIS primarily using SF. This means that the techniques you will learn can be applied regardless of whether you have SF or SS in your organization.

Dux Quax: Is SharePoint the Only Game in Town?

  

Don’t get me wrong here. There are a lot of other great products that can be used as a

PMIS. There are full-featured enterprise-level products, such as Microsoft Project

Server, Clarity, and Primavera; and even open source, web-based products, such as

Google Apps and Basecamp.

  

The challenge with rolling out complex enterprise PMIS toolsets is that it assumes your

organization already has a certain level of project management maturity. By “maturity”

I mean that you have a Project Management Office (PMO) in place; project processes

are being applied, embraced, and continuously improved upon by all project teams;

and project artifacts such as plans, reports, templates, and communication mechanisms

are well defined and structured. The reason for such a stringent requirement is that

these tools must be customized to adapt the processes you currently have in place. A

lot of clients I have worked with assumed that implementing such comprehensive tools

would make projects run better overnight. Yeah, right. Without sound processes in place, a complex tool is quite a beast to leverage. As depicted in cess, and technology in lockstep.

  Figure 1-3. Project management maturity

Other Options

  How about free, web-based, open source products such as Google Sites, Dux? Well, they can serve as a relatively good PMIS to a certain extent. My issue with these tools is their lack of integration with existing project management tools that I use. The last thing I want to do is enter the same set of information 10 times in 10 different places.

  So, how is SharePoint different? If you are coming from an environment where you don’t really have an established project management process and are mostly using Mi- crosoft Word, Excel, Outlook, and maybe Microsoft Project to manage your projects, using SharePoint is taking a baby step ahead. Remember that people are often averse to change. Well, stepping up to SharePoint is not as drastic a change as learning how to use other, more complex PMIS tools.

  Also, I really like the integration between SharePoint and the Microsoft Office products that I use day in and day out. For example, I can enter project schedule information in my Outlook calendar and it will show up in SharePoint, and vice versa. Additionally, an Excel spreadsheet can synchronize milestone tracking with SharePoint, so if my team leads enter milestone completion dates in SharePoint, those dates show up in the Excel spreadsheet sitting on my computer. Isn’t that amazing? See

   for more on this.

Our Case Study: SharePoint Dojo, Inc

  To better reinforce what you will learn, you will practice key concepts and techniques by managing a project for SharePoint Dojo, Inc., a fictional company that we will use throughout this book. SharePoint Dojo is a premier martial arts training facility with more than 200 studios in North America. Established in 1976, it has trained 700,000 students and produced many world-class athletes.

  As history has proven, SharePoint Dojo provides first-rate instruction in the art of tae kwon do, led by a staff of certified masters who have at least eight years of teaching experience and who have competed in international events. In 2008, the company was cited as one of the fastest-growing businesses in the United States.

  To continue its explosive growth, SharePoint Dojo is expanding internationally, open- ing company-owned martial arts training studios in major cities. Multiple project teams have been assembled, and each team will be responsible for managing the opening of each respective studio.

  As the project manager, you will be personally responsible for integrating SharePoint Dojo into the local culture and community of the city to which you have been assigned. The challenges will be significant. You will be required to select the site and furbish the studio, comply with local laws and regulations, set up distribution and logistics, de- velop IT infrastructure and regional reporting initiatives, integrate with existing systems and processes, identify which programs will sell the best in your region, and highlight local opportunities. You will have to handle local contractors, employ staff locally, and carry out local marketing and advertising. The whole time you will have to stay focused on the SharePoint Dojo brand and the SharePoint Dojo experience—this is more than a series of local initiatives to make some money; it is about global expansion.

  As identified by senior management, there are two areas that are crucial to your overall success. The first is having correct project governance in place. It is critical that existing project management standards and processes be followed. Second, a PMIS must be established for each project team, enabling all the teams to share and collaborate on detailed project information, risks, and lessons learned in real time. To accomplish all of these goals, SharePoint Dojo has adopted PMI standards for project governance and implemented a PMIS using Microsoft SharePoint. You will need to set up your own SharePoint PMIS for your project.

  Best Practices Checklist • Establish or be familiar with your project management processes.

• Establish a PMIS for your project.
• Centralize project documents.
• Streamline project communication.
• Become familiar with your SharePoint environment.

Summary

• Successful projects result from sound project management practices, standards, and processes.
• You can increase project productivity by decreasing project inefficiencies.

• SharePoint’s main purpose is to improve how we manage information and facilitate collaboration. It can be used as a PMIS.
• SharePoint can empower project managers because it is easier to learn, has better integration with existing project management tools, and requires less assistance from the IT/IS department than many other PMIS solutions.

  —Chinese proverb

  The first step in taking advantage of SharePoint 2010 in a PMIS is to familiarize yourself with the structure of SharePoint 2010 sites. SharePoint 2010 sites are collaborative websites that are organized in a hierarchy. They are composed of top-level sites and .

  Figure 2-1. SharePoint site hierarchy

  A top-level site is created upon installation of SharePoint 2010 (SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010). It will never have a parent or higher-level site, and it may or may not have child sites or subsites. It is sometimes referred to as a root web- site. By default, additional top-level sites can only be created by the SharePoint 2010 administrator—essentially, the IT/IS folks responsible for SharePoint 2010—or anyone else given the permission to do so. (SharePoint 2010 permissions are discussed in more detail in

  A site collection is an aggregation of a top-level site and its subsites. Site collections are independent of one another. A top-level site without subsites can also be considered a site collection. So, in short, a top-level site is synonymous with a site collection. A PMIS can be created as a top-level site or a subsite. Keep in mind that, by definition, projects are temporary—they have a start date and an end date. This means that a SharePoint PMIS is a temporary site, unlike other SharePoint sites created for perma- nent purposes, such as departmental sites, product sites, customer support sites, etc. You have to think about what will happen to the PMIS once the project is completed. SharePoint 2010 does not automatically remove inactive sites.

How Will You Organize Your PMIS?

  Organizations typically have more than one project utilizing SharePoint as a PMIS. It is critical that you plan and assess how these project-focused sites will be organized and structured for your environment. Involve key decision-makers from IT/IS and your Project Management Office (PMO), if you have one, when choosing one of the three high-level PMIS hierarchy options:

  Single-site collection ). Multiple-site collections Each PMIS is a top-level site (

Multiple-site collections created for a specific department, business unit, product line, etc.

  The PMIS is created as a group of subsites within these top-level sites

  Figure 2-2. Single-site collection Figure 2-3. Multiple-site collections

  Figure 2-4. PMIS created as subsites

  Your decision should be based upon the following three organizational criteria:

  IT/IS involvement in creating a site that spans the three collections

  If each PMIS is a top-level site, IT/IS will likely be responsible for creating the site and defining its site members. However, if each PMIS is a subsite, IT/IS is less likely to be involved, and either the project manager or someone on the project team will create the site.

  Technical considerations

  SF has search limitations. By default, SF can only search within a single site col- lection. For example, if somebody in senior management is interested in looking for a specific document contained within the various project sites, she will have to go to each individual site to run a search if every PMIS is a top-level site. This is not the case if the entire PMIS is grouped as a single site collection. Note that this limitation can be resolved if you have SS instead of SF, because SS comes with an Enterprise Search capability. If IT/IS decides to enable Automated Site Collection Deletion, a feature that automatically deletes an inactive site collection, the deletion will only work if each PMIS is a top-level site, since the feature deletes an entire site collection. If multiple PMISes are grouped in a single site collection, the site collection probably won’t be automatically deleted because the likelihood of the entire site collection being inactive is minimal.

  Decision-making and reporting structure

  As well as deciding whether the PMIS should be structured as individual top-level sites or grouped as a site collection, it is also important to consider your organi- zational structure. For example, are there scenarios where you would group project sites based on business units, product lines, portfolios, or regional operating units? The key to having a successful implementation of SharePoint as a PMIS is to initially plan the organization of sites so they can support the growth of SharePoint adop- tion in your organization. Microsoft has many great resources that can assist you in organizing SharePoint sites, including the SharePoint deployment planning ).

  

Dux Quax: Permanent Versus Temporary Sites

I typically advise my clients that they should have a site collection for permanent sites.

  

These sites would be specific to departments, business units, products, and anything

that could be used for permanent collaboration. Additionally, a site collection should

be created for temporary sites such as a PMIS or a meeting-centric SharePoint site

known as a meeting workspace (see the section

  What typically happens is that there are more temporary SharePoint sites created than

permanent ones. Once a temporary site is no longer needed, it is easier to maintain and

audit if it was in a separate site collection.

Using Site Templates

  SharePoint 2010 comes with site templates for convenient site creation. Common site templates are listed in

  Table 2-1. Default site templates Site template name Description Team Site A site used for collaboration Blank Site A blank site with no predefined features Document Workspace A site that allows collaboration on one or more specific documents Wiki Site A site that can be quickly edited to record information and then linked through keywords

Blog A site for a person or team to post ideas, observations, and expertise that also allows site visitors to

leave comments

  The template determines the default site functionality, layout, menus, etc. (see

  

in