Most of us who have been involved in technology projects in business can attest to hearing the old adage of “We need to make sure we get the business requirements and meet the business user`s needs”, right? Never has this statement been truer than when referring to a project implementation involving Microsoft SharePoint (www.microsoft.com/sharepoint). Why, you might ask? Well let`s highlight a few of the most important reasons:

Firstly, most people hear about SharePoint and all the things it can do and think, “wow, we need that!” even if they`re not exactly sure what they might do with it. Why is this? Well to be fair, even having been involved with SharePoint for many years, it still impresses me in terms of its flexibility and broad range of talents, which I believe is what a lot of people see as a way to address some of their challenges.

They also think, “SharePoint can do so many things that I would have otherwise had to buy multiple systems to achieve”, which is partly true, but I`ll shed a bit more light on that below. So lesson number one is make sure you figure out exactly what you want to start doing with SharePoint and focus on just that to start off with. Make sure that whatever it is, it aligns to the current business goals and priorities.