Kristin Ruth, Author at Perficient Blogs

A PMOs Must Have…Capture 12 Key Attributes about Your Projects

Kristin Ruth — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 01:22:33 +0000

Capture, consolidate and communicate your Project Portfolio and you will be amazed at how a centralized listing can ensure key stakeholders and project team members are in the know before, during and after. This simple concept makes me think of my Dad who was a Project Manager before his time as he would be managing the phone at home and referred to himself as “Home-base” for information and help for anyone of us. It would be terrific if people referred to any PMO as “Home-base” for the Company’s Project Portfolio.
Take the time create your consolidated Project Portfolio and send out via email or provide a link to a SharePoint List or Excel Spreadsheet depending on your company culture and technology options. If you would like to discuss how to get started reply back.
A terrific start to organizing your Portfolio of Projects is to first consolidate your projects into one place. Then determine some key attributes to track by. My valuable core 12 are:

Project Title
Requester
Business Prioritization (1 -5)
Strategic/Business Value Statement
State (Active, Pending, On Hold)
Business Unit/Department
Business Leader/Owner
Estimated Budget-Forecast
Estimated Start and Finish
Estimated Resource Teams Required
Level of Risk (1 -5)
Business Value-Link to Company Strategy

PMO/Project Management Guidance and Governance: Consolidate and Communicate your 2012 Project Portfolio…

Kristin Ruth — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:58:42 +0000

SharePoint Governance: Do I post or email? Attach or Check In?

Kristin Ruth — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:45:00 +0000

I think of this because when rolling out SharePoint for your Company Intranet it becomes increasingly more valuable to step back and look at the various documentation and communication tools. Some that can be considered:

· Microsoft Suite

o Windows Explorer – Files Shares

o Excel, Word, Access, Visio, Project

o Outlook

· Documents

o Attachments

o PDFs

o Images

o Video

· Communications

o Meetings

o 1:1s

o Training Classes

o Conferences

No one likes to be told what to do but take one look at your company file shares or email and it would be hard not to argue for some Governance. As you concentrate on determining the Governance for SharePoint you will begin to realize that the education, approvals and communications are best served to include informing everyone when it is appropriate to:

1. save something to your C: Drive

2. save something to your network file shares

3. send an attachment in an email

4. post to SharePoint

a. create a Document Library

b. convert existing information to a List

c. add images

d. add Video

By determining for your company when you should email, post to SharePoint, check in/check out, etc., you will be gaining the benefits of crafting a culture of governance that creates standards and consistency, protects performance and reliability, the start of a document and knowledge management strategy and lastly ensures sustainability and adoption.

If you would like to talk, share your ideas or learn more, please email me at kruth@pointbridge.com.

SharePoint Governance: You want to do what? Under our IT Roof?

Kristin Ruth — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:40:00 +0000

You know how you felt when you were a teenager and you may have heard at least once but probably several times not under our house. Recently, I had this same experience but it was not a flashback to my teenage years but during an IT Change Control Meeting. Eyes go wide with traditional Change Control Team members and methodologies when you educate on the functionality and flexibility of SharePoint. It is a fine balance to provide the user community access to the functionality of SharePoint yet protect the performance, reliability, security and content of the sites.

Most SDLC methodologies and change control practices are based on implementing an ERP like PeopleSoft, Oracle or SAP. Access to make changes to a panel or label is maintained within IT and follows the traditional gather requirements, create the design, build in test, actually test the change and gain approvals, then present to change control and finally move to production. In the world of SharePoint change can move much faster and your SharePoint business owner or site owner can easily update a site or sites by a few clicks right in production without ever impacting the site performance or user experience.

The good and bad of this is in most instances Business Owners and Site Owners are energized, excited and want the control to manage their site. One would say that it is an IT Leader’s hope to have an excited and take charge Business or Site Owner. And even better, SharePoint is an easily adaptable tool that can provide for this type of environment.

Enter the Seesaw effect: the balancing act that is necessary to ensure the stability of your SharePoint Environment yet provide the flexibility of ownership and control of your business owners and site owners need to drive the true value and benefits of SharePoint.

If you would like to talk, share your ideas or learn more, please email me at kruth@pointbridge.com.

SharePoint Governance: Here a site, there a site, everywhere a site, site…

Kristin Ruth — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:26:00 +0000

No I am not going to break into song about chicks, cows and horses. But this song came to mind as I thought about the SharePoint environments that are created across an organization. Do you sometimes wonder how the sites just keep growing? Is it the excitement during the project design or training phase? Or, perhaps it was the CEO’s email announcing that your company is moving to online collaboration for everything? While this a great signal in strong user adoption, you want to create a culture of guidance and guardrails to ensure your ability to manage and maintain the “farm.”

There are many reasons why people will want a site. Not just a shared site but a site of their own. Communication and collaboration are most likely the top two reasons but also a site creates a forum for centralized posting of documents, information, contacts, pictures, blogs, wikis, videos, etc. SharePoint sites provide the ability to store content and documents with attributes that can be sorted, searched and exported.

Whether you are the SharePoint Director, Manager, Administrator, Infrastructure Lead, Business Owner, etc. each one of you has a responsibility to contribute, be informed and lead the effort towards a Governance Plan. Every company, culture and environment is different but I firmly believe that all need at least some level of guidelines, policies and structure. Below are some suggested key questions and assumptions to get you started in the world of Governance focused on SharePoint Site Creation:

Governance Area	Key Questions	Governance Assumption
Strategy and Vision	What is the need for the site? How does this site support the approved strategy?	Every site has an appointed site owner and a purpose linked to the company strategy.
Strategy and Vision	How will you measure the value of the site?	Each site owner can articulate the value of creating the requested site.
Communication	How will this site be communicated?	A communication process for new sites and notification of existing sites should be defined.
Roles and Responsibilities	Who is the Site Owner? Have they been trained?	A site requester is able to provide the name of the site owner. Ensure this person has been trained before access and rights are granted.
Sustainment	How will the site be sustained once it is live? 30, 60 90 days?	A sustainment plan for each site is documented and approved prior to a move to production.
Master Layouts & Design	Which site template will you use? Will you require modifications to the existing template? Additional web parts?	Site Templates will be created for each type of site. Ie. Home, Function, Department, Team, Project, Customers, Vendors, My Site.
Master Layouts & Design	Does your content follow the font guidelines? · Fonts, Color, Size (ie. Arial-Black-2 for Normal Text, Ariel-Blue-2 for Links, Titles are Bolded)	Font Style, Size and Color are defined for each site template, collection, etc.
Content	Do you have content for the site? · Announcements – Vision, Mission, Daily Updates, Opinion, Fact, Newsworthy · Pictures & Videos- Cartoons? Professional Only? Action? A day in the life? · Document Libraries – SharePoint vs. File Shares vs. Email Attachments · Lists – Calendars, Contacts, etc. · Surveys, Wikis, Blogs	Focus on the type of content, creation of the content and validation should be completed.
Content	What is the frequency of the content refresh for each section of the site?	Start simple. A monthly update works well vs. weekly. 7 Days go by very quickly. Quarterly works well for more static content, ie. Goals and Objectives.
Security	Is the site Public or Private? If private, do you have a list of approved visitors, contributors or members?	Security is tightly managed and linked to roles and responsibilities as well as training. Securing content across the site is primary as well as adding a confidentiality statement as part of the master page layout.

The above matrix 1^st breaks down the questions by governance area. It is important to understand the link to each major governance focus. In my experience, these questions can be utilized for the requirements gathering to create a site. I have chosen some of the key questions to demonstrate that it does not take many to ensure your sites are consistent, valuable and most important increase user adoption. Your goal in walking through these questions is to strike a balance that allows users to experience the tremendous functionality and flexibility of SharePoint while at the same time not selling the farm to fulfill every request for a new site.

So, where are you in the SharePoint Governance Evolution? Just getting started? Already in production and know you need to do something? If you have a governance plan started, expand it or if you don’t, get started small and grow. One thought is that IT organizations need to carefully balance their needs to maintain the environment with the needs of the organization to be nimble.

If well executed, the SharePoint sites will be valuable, well maintained and the utilization of SharePoint predictable and standardized whereby unleashing the power of the technology without the pain of a breakaway technology growing within your Data Center or SharePoint Farm.

If you would like to talk, share your ideas or learn more, please email me at kruth@pointbridge.com.