Developing a Business Requirements Strategy for SharePoint Infrastructure
Brian LalancetteNavantis Inc.
March 9, 2015
Clickbait Title!
They Thought They Were Ready To Install SharePoint. What Happened Next Left Them Shocked And Speechless!
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Who Am I?
Consultant at www.navantis.com
SharePoint infrastructure specialist
PowerShell nerd
AutoSPInstaller
AutoSPSourceBuilder
Lazy admin
Even lazier blogger
*New*! Stroke survivor!
Audience Poll
Quick poll
Business Users
Power Users
Admins
Developers
Executives
*It’s OK to vote more than once
(i.e. admit to being more than one)
Business, Schmusiness!
Why gather requirements?
Build something that actually fits *
Save money; spend wisely on areas that count
Focus on purpose
Opens the conversation between stakeholders and IT
First Things Last
“Where does it hurt?”
What business problem are we trying to solve?
What gap are we trying to fill?
Learn a bit about the nature of the business *
Common Pitfalls
Where does I.T. hurt?
But tech is cool! Implement it for its own sake!
“We’d rather not involve the business” *‒ (Customer have actually told me this)
Cart before the proverbial horse‒ IT department makes the call on what tools to use Who’s serving whom?
‒ Business users feel the pain of either: Bleeding edge technology
Legacy, out-of-date platforms
Sample Questionnaire
Overall approach
Gauge your audience‒ Technical?
‒ Decision Makers?
‒ Power Users
‒ End Users (wait, what?)
“Zoom in/out” as required *
Ultimately geared toward helping to make infrastructure decisions
Assumes this is on-premises
Sample Questionnaire
Questions
Type of site (Intra/Extra/Inter) Number of employees
‒ Number of SharePoint users (& growth rate!)‒ Concurrency rate (more on this later)
Where are your employees/users? * Employee/user privilege model
‒ Open by default vs. closed by default
Will they be working with large files? * Usage patterns:
‒ Collaboration / Consumption / Mix (ratio)
Sample Questionnaire (continued)
More questions Services & service apps for SharePoint *
‒ Business Data Connectivity‒ Managed Metadata‒ Office Web Apps‒ Visio Graphics Service‒ “We want it all” Oh really now…
My Sites / Personal Sites‒ Fear & Confusion Governance Capacity Planning State of Active Directory? Who gets personal sites?
Sample Questionnaire (continued)
Even more questions
Uptime & Availability
‒ How long can business tolerate a service outage?
‒ At what times (if at all) can they tolerate outages?
‒ Can they stand to lose any data? How many hours’ worth? *
BUT
‒ As downtime approaches zero, cost approaches infinity
‒ Therefore balance a reasonable expectation of uptime with customer’s budget
Sample Questionnaire (continued)
“Great, but we’re just upgrading…”
Not “just” upgrading *
Take this opportunity to review prior requirements (if they had even been identified/considered)
DB attach, or manual/automated migration? Size of databases Custom and/or non-upgradeable solutions
Move your clutter vs. opportunity to start fresh(er)
Sample Questionnaire (continued)
Broader organizational concerns
Risk Tolerance
Desire for Innovation / Platform Currency
Data Retention Requirements
Thoughts on Concurrency
Concurrency is everything! MS likes to use “total number of users”
‒ However it’s kind of meaningless as-is… *
‒ Concurrency is usually expressed as a percentage• Average number of user sessions at a particular time
‒ 10% as a rule of thumb (Intranets)
‒ Internet (public-facing) concurrency much tougher to nail down
‒ Do we anticipate peak periods of abnormally high concurrency?
Farm Sizing
Farm size & capacity
Implications of a farm that’s too small‒ Poor performance
‒ Running out of space
‒ Lots of warnings in CA that tend to be ignored
Implications of a farm that’s too big‒ Staff required to operate and monitor
‒ Patching (downtime, costs, overtime) x number of servers
‒ Complexity outweights benefits
Mitigation Strategy
But what if…
IT has already made some of the decisions (prior to your involvement)?
Corporate culture or policy makes it unfeasible to interview business representatives?
You’ve exhausted all avenues?
Mitigation Strategy (continued)
Plan for:
Future growth‒ Monitor performance & load proactively
Scalability‒ Virtualization‒ Storage capacity (SANs, dynamically-expanding VHDX etc.)‒ Farm topologies‒ Be ready with tools, scripts etc. that will allow you to scale out the farm
Staff readiness‒ Training *‒ Leave-behind materials
Summary
Summary
Business is the reason we’re in business
If you can’t think of a business case for implementing x, why are you doing it?
Think about the goals & purpose behind SharePoint farm size & design (and cost)
Contact Links & References
More reading & contact info
Twitter: @brianlala
Blog: http://spinsiders.com/brianlala
Blog: http://blog.navantis.com/author/brianlalancette
Some guest posts:
‒ http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2014/02/01/weekend-scripter-using-autospinstaller-and-autospsourcebuilder.aspx
‒ http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2010/03/23/hey-scripting-guy-march-23-2010.aspx
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