Welcome to the fifth article in my series on fostering mutual love and respect between those know-it-all smartarse technical geeks and the guys who do their taxes!  This is the final SharePoint scenario that I will cover in this series, but there will be some more articles coming later, as we further look at the financial side of things.

To recap, the first article introduced the financial concept of discount cash flow, net present value and internal rate of return. Next, we discussed how I came up with the three scenarios and the assumptions and methodology behind valuing the scenarios, which placed a specific emphasis on costing the holistic view of governance. The last two articles, here and here, covered the first two scenarios, where we showed the circumstances where the project had a good outcome, and a not so good outcome.

So, for the last time around, we are going to take on a difficult SharePoint scenario. This is the scenario where SharePoint is used as the platform to build a custom web application.

Continue reading “Learn to talk to your CFO: Web Application Scenario – Part 5”

Welcome to the fourth article in my series that attempts to bridge the cultural divide between nerds and accountants. Unfortunately there are more differences to these two strange species than just fashion sense and whether a pocket calculator is in their possession. But despite being poles apart about what pushes their buttons, at the end of the day they are both trying to achieve a positive result.

The first article introduced the financial concept of discount cash flow, net present value and internal rate of return. Next, we discussed how I came up with the three scenarios and the assumptions and methodology behind valuing the scenarios, which placed a specific emphasis on costing the holistic view of governance. .

The previous article to this one was the first of these three identified scenarios, internal corporate collaboration. This time, we are going to take on a popular SharePoint scenario centered around web content management (WCM).

Continue reading “Learn to talk to your CFO: WCM scenario – Part 4”

Hi. This is the third article in a series that attempts to explain some financial analysis techniques to non financial oriented IT people. My first two articles in this series were theory and background and this is the first of three scenarios that illustrates an example.

This first scenario is an example of SharePoint as a collaborative solution. It also happens to be the scenario that for my money, carries with it the most risk. But at the same time, SharePoint is well suited to this sort of solution if you follow my branding and document management wisdom 🙂

Continue reading “Learn to talk to your CFO : Collaboration scenario – Part 3”

Hi, there.

It’s been a while since my last post but the whole issue of having a life and earning money kind of got in the way. In addition I have been procrastinating a little, because writing about technical and programming type issues for me are a lot easier to write, compared to governance, strategy and financial matters.

To recap on my last post, I wrote about a common technique used to assess the value of an investment. I discussed the time effect on money, the concept discount cash-flow and some of the related calculations like Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR). If you have not read that article, I strongly suggest that you do so before continuing.

Continue reading “Learn to talk to your CFO in their language – Part 2”

Nerds and CFO’s. If there is ever a group of people who don’t know how to talk to each other, it would be those two. Perhaps, I should write a book and call it “Nerds are From Mars, CFO’s are from Venus” (ok for those of you who did not get that little joke go here).

Now, not so long ago, I was a serious nerd. Not in a ‘have the latest gadget and bash Microsoft ‘cos it’s cool’ sense, but I got very deeply involved in the guts of the technology. I was heavy into infrastructure and security. Got a few certs to make my business cards and CV look good, etc. In addition, I *thought* that I understood business. I wrote reports and memos that used all the right ‘business sounding’ cliches. In my security work I wrote lovely risk assessments, good security policies, etc. I wrote technical architectures in loving detail, outlining the technical vision and strategy for the company going forward.

Continue reading “Learn to talk to your CFO in their language – Part 1”

Well, here we are! After delving into dark arts where everybody but metrosexual web designers fear to tread (HTML and CSS), we then delved into the areas that metrosexual web designers truly fear to tread (packaging, deployment and even some c# code!). Finally, we get to the area where everybody is interested until it happens to get in their way! (Ooh, I am a cynical old sod tonight).

That is Governance!

Continue reading “SharePoint Branding Part 7 -The ‘governance’ of it all..”

There has been a bit of a gap in this series between part 5 and 6 – and fortunately for the both of us, I think this is the penultimate post in my series on SharePoint branding. While it has been an interesting exercise for me, I must confess each successive article is getting harder to write as my interest is shifting 🙂  So many sub-disciplines within MOSS – I think I might delve into WCM soon :-).

Continue reading “SharePoint Branding Part 6 – A "solution" to all issues?”

This is an opinion piece, a different tack than a lot of my other topics. I’m going to attempt to use heavy metal music as my metaphor to get my point across. No idea if I will succeed :-).

Opeth \m/ \m/

Firstly, SharePoint, in my opinion, is a collaborative platform, more than it is a collaborative product. In the same way that Lotus Notes can be argued as a messaging platform. Both have their core competencies and solve particular types of problems. However, they can also be customised and sophisticated applications can be built upon the foundation they provide.  Note my emphasis on the word collaborative.

Continue reading “SharePoint sucks at document management – or does it? A metal perspective”

One thing you will first notice in planning a MOSS install is the sheer number of service accounts used. Without proper planning, it is only going to result in a poor set up and most likely be insecure. Despite the complexity of having to learn what each service account is required for, MOSS2007 does a reasonable job in working in a restricted configuration. Properly configured, the majority of these accounts can run with minimal security privileges.

If you follow all the best practice guides, and religiously read Joel’s stuff, I would be preaching to the converted.

Continue reading “DCOM Fun with SharePoint”

Welcome to the fourth article in my series on SharePoint branding. Sorry for the time it’s taken to get this one out, but a certain game called “The Legend of Zelda:  Hourglass Phantom” on NDS got in the way. I finished it yesterday and only had to cheat via google once :-). Anyway it’s out of my system now so I can get back to this.

After 3 epic articles on all that painful CSS and master page stuff (part one, two and three), we now focus on what you have to do to get your branding masterpiece deployed to the SharePoint farm the clever way. In this next set of articles, we will look at where things should go, and then how to get it there the right way.

Continue reading “SharePoint Branding Part 4 – Packaging up your masterpiece into a Feature”