At the San Diego Best Practices SharePoint conference, I sat quietly and listened to the governance godfather himself, Robert Bogue, discussing with the other SharePoint "big kids" various reasons why InfoPath sucks in many situations and some of its current design faults. I mean, anybody who has used forms services knows what a pain redeployment is, how much of a pain managed code is, the horrible performance of web services, branding crap and the like. Thus, all were perfectly valid points.

But irrespective of how correct those points are, I’d like to categorically state why InfoPath 2007 and Forms Services are the best pieces of technology that Microsoft has ever invented.

The simple reason is this.

My wife likes it!

To fully explain the implications of why InfoPath rocks, I have created an IBIS issue map that makes the argumentation quite clear.

I rest my case.

Thanks for reading

Paul Culmsee

www.sevensigma.com.au

                      

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Ah – this is exactly my sense of humour. My colleague Mike Stringfellow wrote a post called "Code Monkey Hates SharePoint" where he presents a quick multi-choice questionnaire of seemingly innocent questions that allows you to determine how predisposed your code-monkey is to completely butchering your SharePoint environment. Apparently there is not much difference between "the ideal SharePoint developer" and a serial killer

Good stuff – you can check it out here

                      

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A quick observation: Jeremy wrote a good post on the ins and outs of jQuery as a SharePoint band-aid. Having done a little messing with JavaScript (under duress) I had a peek at his well thought out post. After reading it however, I came away thinking that jQuery was more like blu-tack than a band-aid. I’m not sure why I felt this, but after reading the blu-tack article on wikipedia, I knew I was right.

I am now going to substitite "blu-tack" with "jQuery" and quote directly from wikipedia.

jQuery is a versatile, reusable putty-like pressure based adhesive

Check: When the project manager is breathing down your neck to "get that $%^%$ site out now", you can throw in some jQuery in a content editor web part and avoid writing anything server side.

But the clincher argument for me was this one…

jQuery can leave an oily stain on paper materials if attached for a long period of time.

Hehe! Although band-aids can hurt a lot when they come off, I think the oily stain metaphor is better

                      

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Hi all

I’ve read a few blogs on site definitions vs site templates and reading some development centric articles, particularly the alternative presented by Raymond, and expanded by Mike and summarised neatly by Chris. Being a part time developer, I found that the explanation were a little…shall we say… geeky and I had to expend far too many brain cells.

So to assist the rest of the SharePoint community who are not developers, I am going to attempt to explain the whole sorry debate to you using a more suitable analogy – boy bands. That way you do not have to worry about developer-speak.

Boy-band "definition"

There are several mandatory characteristics of being a boy band.

1. All have to be pretty-boys
   One is permitted to be tough in a non threatening way
   One is sensitive
2. There must be 5 members
3. All must be able to dance
4. Playing a musical instrument is not permitted
5. Clothes are always the latest fashion
6. Members do not write their own songs
7. Must do exactly what the record company tells them

When you create a new boy-band, you audition a bunch of hopefuls, using this core set-up and then just give them a nice radio friendly name.

Now, it really doesn’t matter which band it is, this is the formula that is followed by record producers with staggering success. But there is a catch! Change any of these parameters and the whole thing falls apart. For example, if we replace the non-threatening tough guy with a fat kid who can’t dance, teenage girls will rebel and the band will have to break up. It makes no difference which boy-band we are taking about either. You have broken the fundamental structure of how they work and the whole thing will disintegrate.

This, my friends, is a *site definition*.

Also – this is very important to note. The "boy-band" definition is an out-of-the box definition. In other words, no matter what environment that you are operating in, you will always find that the boy-band definition is there.

Boy-band templates

However, just because you have to follow this definition doesn’t mean you can’t make some changes here and there. For example, you can safely change a boy-band’s musical style from pop to light opera and "New Kids On the Block" effectively turns into "Il Divo". If "Il Divo" turns out to be popular among the user population, then the record company will want to produce more operatic boy bands. If we could take "Il Divo" and somehow save them as a template, then we can create new operatic boy-bands quickly and easily.

But the core fact remains that if you modify the original boy-band definition, this new template will crash and burn as well.

"Operatic boy-bands" and "Pop boy-bands" are therefore examples of "site templates".

Both bands are based on the underlying "boy-band" definition and as a result, cannot exist independently without that definition. So what if we want to use the "Operatic boy-band" template in another location?

Not a problem, because as I described earlier, the boy-band definition is out of the box in all locations, and therefore the templates will always be able to be used in other locations.

Unfortunately, sometimes there are limitations with boy-band templates. The bands themselves have "grown" and now realise the original *definition* they have based their template on is too restrictive and will not scale with their future "artistic requirements". There is only so much that you can do when tweaking the more limited options provided by the template model. But since they are based on the underlying boy-band definition, then we are stuck.

New Kids On The block are a great case in point. In 1994, when they released their 4th studio album, they attempted to write their own songs to the detriment of their boy-band career. As we now know that violates rule 6 of the boy-band site definition and as expected, the group split up shortly after.

New site definitions and portability

So let’s just say that we want to make the first ever "hybrid death-metal boy band". We know that we cannot do this with a template alone because it will violate the boy-band definition and the world will explode. So we have to make up a new definition to accommodate this unique requirement. Suddenly we are faced with a lot more complexity here. Instead of just re-using a template we have to come up with a brand new definition and this requires specialised expertise. We already know that once we have made up our new definition that it can never be changed, so we had better make sure that we have it right the first time.

Now, let’s say that we create our first death-metal boy band called "New Kids on the Cannibal Corpse" and launch them in Sweden – where all the good metal bands come from. We create our new definition and then set up a new record label, hire PR guys, roadies, stylists, personal assistants and it all goes terrific. Sweden loves this new music sensation. But then when they try and break into the UK scene, it fails miserably. Why? Because we don’t have a record label there. They do not know how to properly deal with a new band based on this hybrid death-metal boy band definition because they have never seen this definition before.

This is one of the problems with making up new site definitions. Since it is not out of the box, if you try and move "New Kids on the Cannibal Corpse" to a new operating environment such as the UK, the definition is missing and therefore they have no idea how to handle it. This creates a dependency issue. Before "New Kids on the Cannibal Corpse" can be launched in the UK, we have to set up the "hybrid death-metal boy band" definition there *first*. Contrast this to "Il Divo" which can tour anywhere because the "boy band" definition is out of the box and therefore already set up by default at all locations.

Future Directions

Musical tastes change over time. Fads come and go, and alas, even boy-bands go out of favour. To achieve real longevity, all bands have to occasionally reinvent themselves – in effect go through a complete upgrade process and emerge as something completely new. The one advantage that boy bands have is that their popularity among teenyboppers means that the record industry will provide assistance to help them emerge as something new.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said with our poor hybrid death-metal boy band, who, being a custom designed product, will have no guarantees that the record company will help them reinvent.

Therefore, there are disadvantages to a custom band definition. Future upgrades are tougher. But if you have managed to remain on the boy-band definition, despite working with the reduced flexibility of being a customised template, you should be able to upgrade to a newer version with much less pain.

This is important because although you might have more flexibility when freed from the confines of a boy-band definition, you pay for it with future upgrade uncertainty.

Conclusion

So now you should be full-bottle on the difference between site definitions and site templates. So, which one should you use? At the end of the day, it depends on whether you want to be a one-hit-wonder or achieve long term staying power. However, remember the most important thing above all else…

Under no circumstances should you *ever* listen to boy-bands!

Thanks for reading

Paul Culmsee

                      

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I’ve always avoided too many pictures of myself online – I think its the little security person that sits on my left shoulder and says "privacy privacy", usually louder than the little marketing person on my right saying "go on you handsome devil!"

I was only just coming to grips with the guys at the Best Practices SharePoint Conference putting up a small thumbnail and then Arno Nel goes and puts a large one on an interview I just did for SharePoint Magazine. Damn!, I forgot to turn my collar up and put some product in my hair – where is Jeremy Thake when you need him!

                      

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Hi all

I know statistically it’s meaningless and is hugely subjective, but it looks like I have ended this week (and this month), having finally cracked the million hits mark. Of course, the significance is about the same as when you think its cool when your car speedo clocks over from 99,999 miles to 100,000.

But to those of you that visit this site, thanks so much for your patronage and feedback. Hopefully if SharePoint (and IT in general) doesn’t send me completely insane, then some bigger and better things are to come.

Paul Culmsee

                      

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Oh how times change! I am reading a good book at the moment called "Competing on Analytics – The New Science of Winning" and I hit one particular quote that I have to share with you. It’s one of those statements that makes perfect sense at the time, but is kind of funny when you look at it in the context of recent world events in the financial markets.

…But in other cases, analytics can permanently transform an industry or process. As Money-ball and Liar’s Poker author Michael Lewis points out in talking about investment banking. "the introduction of derivatives and other new financial instruments brought unprecedented levels of complexity and variation to investment firms. The old-school, instinct guys who knew when to buy and when to sell were watching young MBA’s – or worse, PhD’s from MIT – bring an unprecedented level of analysis and brain power to trading. Within 10 years the old guard was gone".

I love that line "analysis and brain power", given the contribution of derivatives to the prospect of a "teensy weensy" global recession. Mind you, how much ‘analytics’ do you think is going into current decisions and company valuations on the stock market?

Where are those old school guys? I want ‘em back!!

                      

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I don’t know if you have ever read ISO9001, but it is about as exciting as getting a root canal or trying to listen to a Ricky Martin album with a straight face. But hey, if they were actually interesting, ISO compliance wouldn’t be such a billion dollar industry. Does anybody else use SharePoint for ISO compliance purposes? I’ve done several of them now.

First up, I’ll give you the Cleverworkarounds’ version of ISO9001 and then I’ll teach you how to use it to get your own way .

ISO9001 is an internationally recognised standard that provides an organisation with the guiding principles, means and methods to improve their internal quality. If you are wondering what or which quality, then I can’t give you an answer because it depends on your organisation. So for example, Microsoft might use ISO9001 to improve their ability to release a desktop operating system that people actually like. McDonalds may use ISO9001 to ensure that your calorie-laden burger is *consistently* calorie-laden no matter which store you visit.

Continue reading “(ab)using ISO9001 for fun and profit”

                      

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My little boy will be turning four this weekend. We are hosting one of those parties with a zillion toddlers, copious amounts of candy and a bouncy castle.

He seems to have gotten through the toddler tantrum stage without causing us too much heartache and is now into the philosophical stage where he asks some surprisingly insightful questions. He asked me "Where did the first baby come from?" and so I messed with his head a little with the chicken and egg paradox . Other questions that come to mind include, on being woken up by him one morning, "Why do we have blood in our body?", "When I’m all grown up, who will be your little boy?" and "Will I have a little boy when I’m bigger?"

The other day when we were discussing family relations and related terms, he retorted pretty definitively "You are not my parents. You are my Mummy and Daddy!"

So, you can imagine my surprise and amusement when he recently asked me "Why is there fire on the sun?" I mean he’s turning four – how do you answer that?

Rather than try and water it down, I explained it like a tech-guy would. I casually spent about 3 minutes explaining in detail the process of nuclear fusion in the core of a star and how lighter elements fuse into heavier elements, releasing tremendous amounts of energy in the process. He listened intently, not missing a beat. When I had finished my explanation, I asked him if he understood all that I had told him.

Without even the slightest hesitation he said definitively,

"Yes, Daddy."

.. and then went back to playing Wii Sports.

I then realised that he has all the qualifications needed to have a long and very successful career in IT or finance.

                      

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Here we go… another Cleverworkarounds waffle!

Now, we all know that Joel Oleson is the Russell Crowe of the SharePoint world! I mean, he’s multi-skilled, loads of talent, has the respect of his peers and has built a well deserved reputation of being one of the best at what he does. (Although unlike Russell I am fairly sure that he has not thrown a telephone at an annoying IT manager in a fit of rage just yet).

But despite his best intentions and with his heart in the right place, Joel is one of the unwitting architects of a butterfly effect that is now plaguing the SharePoint world. One that is now causing much pain and damage to already beleaguered enterprises.

In short, he set the wheels in motion that helped destroy a word via buzzword abuse That word is…

"Governance"

See, way, way back in the bowels of time (okay, around 2006), when the stock market was soaring and therefore SOX compliance was being conveniently ignored by investors in equities, Joel’s blog was one of a couple of blogs of any significance SharePoint-wise. He was out there doing his bit for the common good, stressing the importance of governance in the SharePoint world before the word governance was really used in this context. Joel cited this article by Matthew Cain at Gartner which seems to be the root of it all. Now this is perfectly fine and dandy, but Joel made one fatal mistake that we are still feeling the effects of…

He de-nerdified his blog and made this stuff accessible! Thus, somewhere in the world, a marketing person read it and understood just enough syllables to get a gist of what Joel was talking about. Sensing the opportunity to add a new word to glossy brochureware, from that moment forward the true meaning of "governance" was lost forever as the snowball effect of a new buzzword taking root gained momentum. As the snowball rolls faster, more and more vendors get onto the bandwagon, each skewing the definition to suit their own ends.

So now, I am afraid that governance is now irreversibly sliding down the same slippery slope as such luminaries as "convergence", "portal", "ubiquitous", "social networking" and the current cream of the crop – "web 2.0".

…and it’s all Joel’s fault, right?

So, how to reclaim this word? I don’t know if you can. I have, however, decided to start a social experiment making my own future buzzword. More on that in a minute.

Governance = systems thinking

Before I present my version of what governance really means, I want to enlighten you to an important philosophical concept that underpins governance called "systems thinking" or "the systems approach". Systems thinking approaches problem solving from the perspective that the problem must be looked at as parts of an overall system, rather than focusing on individual outcomes. Wikipedia has quite a nice quote which captures the philosophy nicely.

Systems thinking attempts to illustrate that events are separated by distance and time and that small catalytic events can cause large changes in complex systems. Acknowledging that an improvement in one area of a system can adversely affect another area of the system, it promotes organizational communication at all levels in order to avoid the silo effect.

Either I have been officially typecast, or many organisations are feeling the same pain. The reason I say this is because I’ve been called in to assist organisations that are suffering a crisis of confidence with the SharePoint platform. In each case there are one or more highly visible and persistent problems that are causing user dissatisfaction. That translates to a stressed and under-confident SharePoint/IT project team who are questioning the validity of the SharePoint platform.

My brief in each was to help them pinpoint the root cause of their immediate pain, but in the context of a more holistic review of the SharePoint service to try and identify the gaps that allowed the situation to arise in the first place. The interesting fact about these sites is that they did have governance plans and on the surface of it all, most of the boxes could be ticked.

So, what went wrong?

It all boiled down to this: Stakeholders had a different interpretation of what governance actually means – the curse of a buzzword!. Most stakeholders in fact were more interested in the fact that they had a thirty page document someone wrote with "Governance plan" in the title and thought "okay that’s done, what’s next?".

This is not a systems thinking approach and therefore, this is not good governance. In fact, it really has missed the point entirely.

"SharePoint Assurance" is the new buzzword  

At the end of the day, there are two immutable facts of working life.

1. We are all accountable to someone. Whether it is the board of directors being accountable to shareholders or the guy on the helpdesk being accountable to his operational manager, the vast majority of us are tasked with various responsibilities that our performance is judged on. If we fail to perform to the expectations, we not only let ourselves down, but we can adversely affect others.

2. We all want to go home from work, secure in the knowledge that we performed what was expected of us and we are still going to have a job tomorrow.

Both of these facts underpin the principle that we are all cogs in a complex organisational machine where our individual (and organisation-wide) fate is reliant on each other in complex, often implicit interdependencies.

Governance therefore is all about providing assurance. If you do not provide assurance, you will have fear, uncertainty and doubt. Take a look at the stock markets crashing around the world. Clearly assurance is in extremely short supply!

A Social Experiment

Now what I want to do twofold. For some strange reason I see the funny side of creating a new buzzword and see how long it takes to get to a brochure. Thus I am officially raising a virtual flag and laying claim to being the first person to use the term "SharePoint assurance" instead of SharePoint governance. (at the time of a writing a google search on this phrase yields only 5 hits).

Once you see the term in a marketing brochure, please let me know

But on a more serious note, I think that assurance in the SharePoint space can be done a lot better than it is and I have a few ideas on how this can be achieved.

More (hopefully much more) on this topic area soon…

Thanks for reading

Paul Culmsee

                      

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